


Ties that Break

by Panda_Valentine



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2018-08-02
Packaged: 2019-06-15 17:14:59
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 12
Words: 31,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15417723
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Panda_Valentine/pseuds/Panda_Valentine
Summary: Set in the AU of the Ties that Bind Cid nan Garlond has been playing the double agent for entirely too long and its starting to do his head in.Unfortunate then, that the 1 in a lifetime chance of being a genetic match to an Au'Ra is about to push his stress levels into previously unknown territories of awful.Muted as a child by an accident Dainty turned her back on her calling to be one of Hydaelyn's chosen, instead turning to a life as a Treasure Hunting Monk before falling into piracy. Absolutely none of which prepared her for being shipped off to Garlemald and married to a Ghost.((This is tagged  non/con solely because of the sensitive nature of the Bride Draft. It does not actually contain anything non consensual but does reference things of that nature. Hence the tag.))





	1. Slipping On Salt Water

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [The Ties that Bind - Rise of a Hero](https://archiveofourown.org/works/14299452) by [cheddarbug](https://archiveofourown.org/users/cheddarbug/pseuds/cheddarbug). 



> Runs concurrent to the Ties that Bind - Rise of a Hero with the final chapter crossing over in to Ties that Bind - Legacy of a Hero timeline. 
> 
> If you have not read those fics I highly suggest you do so first.

“Give me my hat Dainty.” Captain Carvallain ordered the smirking Au’Ra upon whose mint green locks his blue hat had been set at a jaunty angle.

Dainty replied in her usual disrespectful manner, a gesture implying that he should go fuck himself, a loose smile hovering over fill lips.

“It’s her hat now.” T’mra, a Seeker of the Sun Miqote and fellow crew member of the Kraken Arms commented as Marisolle, a pretty teenaged Midlander laughed into the back of her hand.

The rest of the crew, an assortment of Elezen with a couple male Au’Ra mixed in laughed at their Captain’s misfortune at having lost his best hat to the hard-drinking Dainty. The slender Raen hardly looked like she could outdrink the strapping Ishgardian Elezen that was Captain Carvallain but he wasn’t the first to make the mistake of challenging the woman.

The bright Lominsan sunshine beat down on them, each hefting a crate, or cargo bag, standing in a long line of people looking to gain port entry into Limsa Lominsa that day.

“What is the Seven Hells is taking so long?” T’mra frowned, fanning herself with one hand. Unlike Dainty she had no hat to keep the sun off her pretty features.

“The tinheads are doin’ drafts.” Bshoi, the huge Au’Ra second in command, commented. His purple skin and scales so black they could be polished enough to give a reflection marked him as a Xaela of the Azim Steppe.

T’mra felt her heart drop, whirling to glare at Carvallain.

“Are you out of your mind?! We have to get back to the ship at once!” The Miqote insisted.

“And miss the delivery bonus?” Carvallain scoffed. “The Garleans won’t care about you three.”

“That’s easy for you to say! It’s not your life on the line if a match is made!” T’mra seethed.

She had been tested before and judged to be not a match but that didn’t mean it couldn’t change. 

In accordance with the treaty that gave the Garleans the right to draft brides from the Eorzean population Garlean men and Eorzean women were tested frequently. 

Matches were rare even between Hyurs and Garleans, the most compatible of the races with maybe 5 taken that year and only 10 the year before.

Matches were rarer still between Garleans and Miqote, although it had happened twice enough to make T’mra twitchy. Matches between Au’Ra and Garleans were considered impossible, although the scaled peoples were still checked, just in case.

T’mra was not worried for herself, or Dainty but for Marisolle, who had instantly gone pale and slightly green as if she might lose her lunch at any moment.

“I… I’ve never been tested…” the pretty brunette admitted in a tiny voice.

“She’s 12! She’s too young.” Carvallain insisted, earning a filthy glare from Dainty. If she had been tall enough to reach his head she would have slapped the back of it.

“You think the Garleans care about that? Since when have they played by the rules?” T’mra demanded. “She’s pretty!”

Although they had no proof of it Dainty and T’mra both had always been suspicious about the method in which matches were made, blood drawn from the arm and put through a supposedly unbiased magitek device that compared it to a data base of blood taken from Garlean men to see if the genetic potential to produce progeny existed.

It was the unbiased part that Dainty particularly questioned, finding it worth an raised eyebrow or two that it seemed only the very prettiest Elezen and Hyur seemed to be matches. Those that had been scarred by the calamity, or unfortunate looking by the will of the gods some-how just never, ever managed to seem to find a match.

Skimming off the cream of the crop of foreign resources would hardly be out of character for the warlike Garlean’s, after all. In fact it was more or less their exact modus operandi.

“T’will be fine.” Carvallain snorted as they shuffled through the queue, finding his female crew mates’ behavior over dramatic.

T’mra and Dainty shared a long glance, Dainty’s eyes travelling to Marisolle’s stricken features.

As Carvallain had observed the girl was all of 12 summers old, not even yet close to reaching her majority and sheltered besides, having fled abusive parents who kept her locked in a Keep. She would have no hope of standing up for herself against a battle hardened Garlean soldier.

Bshoi lingered near Dainty and Marisolle as Carvallain moved on a head to check in with the Yellow Jackets, stating their business in the port town and handing over the correct import forms. A Garlean soldier attired in red and black and a half helmet ran a seasoned eye over the crew, calling back to someone further down the line that there would be 3 for testing.

“2. The Miqote and Au’Ra only.” Carvallain corrected. “The Midlander is 12.”

It was hard to tell behind the mask but Dainty got the strong impression the Garlean was leering at Marisolle as he ignored their Captain’s pronouncement to comment;

“Happy 16th sweetheart. 3 to test!”

Marisolle started to shake and Bshoi lingered near her, hoping to give some comfort with his massive size.

Dainty rolled her eyes heavensward momentarily, the purple orbs with the bright orange limbal rings taking in the massive Airship docked above the Aftcastle. Grey and black with softly glowing red lights it looked like it could abscond with the entire population of Limsa Lominsa, not just a handful of women that may or may not be matches.

She’d never been tested either, a life spent in seclusion as a Monk or constantly on the move, or at sea as a Treasure Hunter although she had no true fear of being a match, Au’Ra as she was.

“Carvallain, if Marisolle gets taken because of your arrogance I will neuter you.” T’mra warned in dire tones as they began to move.

The Lominsan troops, Maelstrom and Yellow Jackets gave way to Garlean glad signifiers and medicus.

6 in total, 4 guards and 2 medical personal with their syringes and strange machines. Dainty ran an assessing eye over them. Her fingers twitched to reach for a weapon that was not there.

On Admiral Merlwyb’s orders all crews docking in Limsa and entering the city had to leave their weapons behind. A peace keeping move that predated the Garlean testing.

Dainty’s beloved axe, carved from one of the Lord of the Whorl’s teeth, remained far out of reach. She could not take all of them in a fight, not without her axe but she could make one Hell of a distraction and judged a year or two in Garlean confinement worth the cost to keep a child out of the hands of those who would abuse her.

Mayhaps she might get lucky and someone with more honor than those performing the testing would take pity on her, agreeing that Marisolle should never have been tested thanks to her age.

“Spread the word to the others to scatter if she’s matched. Take to the seas. I will cover you as long as I can.” T’mra commented, sotto voice to Bshoi.

Although unarmed as she was the Xaela’s childhood on the Azim Steppe had given him a sprint speed few could rival and a lung capacity to match. Neither doubted he could grab Marisolle and slip beneath the waters of the bay, baring the girl away to rendezvous with the crew at a later date.

Dainty touched the Miqote’s shoulder for her attention, gesturing between the two of them subtly. If there was to be a fight Dainty was the superior fighter of the two, both Warrior and Monk trained while T’mra was a ninja without her knives. Dainty would be able to buy them more time than T’mra could.

T’mra scowled, but nodded her agreement.

“Aye.” The stoic Bshoi agreed through gritted teeth, thinking their Captain had done them dirty that day and his mistake might cost them one of their best crew members. Dainty was strong and fast and quick witted but above and beyond that she was loyal in a way most pirates had not the luxury of being.

Bshoi would mourn her absence on the Kraken Arms.

“Cards?” a bored looking medicus asked and T’mra supplied hers.

“The other two are new by sea.” Carvallain stepped in to explain, giving the term for people who had been found living rough after the Calamity. They were rarer, this many years on but not so uncommon that the Medicus didn’t roll her eyes and mutter “savages.”

“Name?” she demanded of the Au’Ra.

“She’s mute and amnesiac.”

“Of course she is.” Another eye roll, clearly not believe a word spoken.

“Twas the wreckage of one of YOUR ships that took her memory and her voice, tin head lover.” Caravallain retorted, pale eyes narrowing. “Look up the La Noscean incident on yer fancy dancy machines then if you’re so bloody smart.”

“Fine. What details DO you know?”

As Caravallain filled in what little information he did know about Dainty she, T’mra and Marisolle presented their arms to have their blood drawn to the medical personal in order.

Marisolle winced and leaking soft tears as the needle bit home in her skin while T’mra turned her face away to glare at Carvallain and Dainty stared, deadpan, at the screen opposite her own, waiting to see Marisolle’s match.

The screen beeped, and pinged to signify a match, felicitating a soft gasp from the woman testing Dainty.

“That… can’t be right.”

The other Medic, a male Elezen was distracted from attending to Marisolle enough to miss that the midlanders blood was also a match, although hawk eyed Dainty saw it in an instant.

“It must be a mistake.” The Garlean loyal Elezen was commenting, frowning at the screen before shooting a sour look at the Au’Ra. “Pirates. No doubt they were drinking and it is causing a false positive. Test her again.”

Au’Ra’s and Garleans were not compatible.  
They simply weren’t.

This had to be a mistake.

Dainty moved not an ilm, her gaze seemed unfocused but was watching Bshoi sidle closer to Marisolle from the corner of her eyes.

One large purple hand insinuated itself over the girl’s mouth, the other around her waist.

A second needle descended toward the silent, still, Au’Ra’s arm.

And in an instant, all Hell broke loose.

Dainty, trained as a Monk by the Rhalgr’s Fist snapped into movement, taking a sudden grip on the medicus’ arm and fully throwing her at the Elezen. A kick from her booted foot sent both crashing into the machine that had betrayed Marisolle’s positive result, compromising the sample of blood.

A guard lurched towards her and Dainty promptly kicked him square in the crotch, dropping him instantly, hands curling around the weapon of the next to yank it from their hands and use it was a rough bludgeon. There was too many of them, there was no way she could fight them all but she never intended to.

All she had to do was keep swinging and kicking and biting at whatever bit of Garlean flesh made it into her range of attack long enough for the crew of the Kraken Arms to scatter.

“Sedate her!” someone was screaming. “For Hells sake! Sedate her!”

Someone managed to strike her a blow in the head, likely trying to knock her unconscious but her Auri horns deflected the worst of the blow, cracking one of them.

An arrow thudded into her shoulder, biting deep enough to shock her with the pain. Dainty flung her head back, surprised by this.

Garleans didn’t use arrows, they used magitek energy weapons.

The gaze of a Storm Sargent met hers, regret in them.

He took no pleasure in assisting the Garleans in kidnapping the Auri but these women, these brides, were the currency Eorzea paid for their peace. The imprisonment of the few bought the freedom of thousands.

Eorzea could not survive a war with Garlemald.

The effects of a powerful sleeping potion started to worm its way through Dainty’s bloodstream and blur her vision. One of the guards grabbed for her but she managed to claw his face, swaying on her feet. Two closed in from behind, gripping her arms and twisting them behind her back.

Dainty groaned in pain, her adrenaline surging so high she forgot she had taken an arrow to the shoulder until the wound was wrenched in that manner, causing her to go weak at the knees.

“GENTLY!” One of the Medicus’ roared as the guards forced the Au’Ra to the wooden docks on her knees, blood dripped from her broken horn and shoulder, the shaft of the arrow still lodged within it. “DO NOT harm her further.”

“Seriously?” The Elezen snapped, rather feeling like he wouldn’t mind putting his boot between the woman’s eyes as he clutched his wrist, his station was destroyed and one of the glass beakers had left a long gash in his arm when she had thrown him over it.

People were chattering around them but Dainty could barely hear them on her knees on the dock, four set of hands holding her in place as a syringe was yet again introduced to her skin and more blood taken. It was only as the thought occurred to her drugged mind they could have simply taken some from what was leaking out of her shoulder did Dainty question that she was being tested a second time.

She had been so hyper focused on Marisolle’s results it had need even crossed her mind to look at her own. Everything was so fogged she couldn’t focus on it. She thought she managed to spit a mouthful of blood at someones feet before she slipped into blood loss and sleeping potion induced unconsciousness.

The machine beeped softly, and pinged and those gathered stared in shock at the one in a million chance that had just fallen into their laps.

An Au’Ra that was a genetic match with a Garlean.

“That wasn’t supposed to happen. The species are just too different. It was supposed to be a false positive.” The woman felt her hands start to shake a little as a small lick of fear crawled up her spine, looking at the unconscious Auri, the ends of her mint green hair swaying in the dirt as her head lolled. She checked the computer again, just in case there was some mistake and let out a little whimper: “Oh Gods, we’re all done for.”

“Ma’am?” one of the guards questioned.

“Look at who she is matched with.” The female medicus insisted.

She threw a wild gesture at the screen. Where should have been an Identity Card in digital form a huge black REDACTED instead marred the photo, and all the information, from name to number had been obscured.

One of the Emperor’s ghosts.

Men and women of the Garlean court whose missions and projects were so secret that not even their names could be known by the common man.

The other Medicus, the Elezen had seen what she had now and had paled with fright. If they were not very, very clever in their handling of this situation things were going to go poorly for every last one of them. It mattered not who had fired the arrow, they had allowed it to happen.

“Take her to the airship. Have her wounds treated with every possible method at our disposal and for the love of all Seven Hells DO NOT let her wake up.” The Elezen ordered, failing to keep the tremor from his voice.

The guards holding the woman frowned, exchanging confused glances and looking down at the prone woman, her tail hanging limply on the sea water wet dock.

Those orders did not seem right.

Women fighting back was not uncommon and sedating them long enough to treat their wounds and get them into a holding cell to wait until the Garlean they had been matched with arrived to claim them was standard procedure.

Keeping one doped up and unconscious was a direct reversal of everything the guards had been trained in the years the Draft had been active. Au’Ra or not the woman was still an Eorzean bride, there was paper work they were supposed to read, so they would know what was expected of them.

“Listen to me. I need you to understand.” The Medicus warned in dire tones. “They already know she is here. A transport is already being sent for her. If the man she was matched with finds out it was us that did this to her we are DEAD MEN.”

The blacked out identification card on the screen suddenly seemed especially sinister, the soft ping the screen was still making a warning bell of what would happen, and the grave mistake they had made.


	2. The Ghost below Garlemald

Somewhere deep below Garlemald, in a retrofitted Allagans Ragnarok class interment hulk Cid nan Garlond was cheerfully contemplating the arrival of his lunch, completely unaware of the situation in Limsa Lominsa.

An urgent communication had come from above ground several hours ago but, as usual, the absent minded Engineer had ignored it in favor of his current experiment.

Beside him a red haired Midlander named Jessie was watching the machine they had nicknamed “Bessie” quite literally printed out an exact replica of her, albeit one comprised of a substance known as protoplasm rather than human flesh. It looked like human flesh, and it behaved that way too, which was all they really needed.

Cloning.

The Allagans had been doing it for centuries before the demise of their Empire in the 4th Umbral era and it was this technology that Cid hoped to use to put an end to the rather barbaric Bride Draft that had been instituted these 5 years past.

No need to forcibly birth more soldiers when you could simply print them out at home.

“Oh buggrit, it got stuck on the thigh bones again.” Jessie muttered as a large amount of warning lights lit up soundlessly. Sound tended to echo nastily in the laboratory and so alarms that made noise were reserved strictly for whole scale emergencies.

“Hmm?” Cid looked up, then frowned. He hadn’t really thought they had corrected that error this time but he had hoped at least a little. “Well, back in the tub with it.”

“Aye.” Jessie agreed, disappointed, activating the controls to halt the machine and restore the half printed legs to the massive vat of green protoplasm that took up the entire left side of the wall.

They had absolutely tonnes of the stuff but it was still a finite resource and so any unsuccessful printings were thrown back into the vat to dissolve back into its true form of green goo.

“Not to worry, love, the legs were coming out wrong anyway. Yours are far prettier.” Cid flirted, dropping a kiss on the Midlander’s head as he rose to answer the chime that signified a delivery was being sent down in the elevator.

“You are not charming, Garlond.” Jessie informed him but there was a pretty smile on her mouth and the smattering of freckles across her small nose did absolutely nothing to disguise the pink flush of delight.

Cid sauntered out, quite certain that he was in fact VERY charming.

Various laboratory staff going about their duties gave him a nod as he strode past. They were mostly Garleans but there was enough Hyurs mixed in that those present, like Jessie, did not seem startlingly out of place. A lone Elezen was the only real anomaly but they were all well used to seeing his pointed features by now.

Jessie’s gender was the most out of place thing.

When pure bloods did produce children they tended to throw male, skewing the population base to an almost fatal 3:1 male to female ratio and leading to the current decline of their numbers.

Were not for her friendship with the highly favoured Cid nan Garlond Jessie would have been married off as a bride years ago but he could use his influence on the Emperor to keep her safe, insisting no one else was capable of assisting him in his endeavor to produce a clone army for Garlemald.

Jessie still considered it was a vast pity she and Cid weren’t a genetic match, and therefore any union between them was relegated to behind the tightly closed doors of the laboratory. It was something of an open secret within those white lit hallways but the pair still took care not to flirt too openly.

The whirr of the elevators completing their mile long journey into the earth ended, and, with a ping that echoed louder than it should around the laboratory, the doors slid open to reveal a containment pod.

Cid frowned, bright bombardier blue eyes narrowing and brow deeply furling to see the pod.

No good could come of this.

He maintained a strict “no human experimentation” stance and being sent things in pods usually meant that the Emperor was testing his boundaries again. It also meant that it wasn’t his lunch and he was going to go hungry a while longer yet.

“Seven Bloody Hells and all their bloody magitek Reapers.” Cid groused, stomping over to the pod and retrieving the file and identification card that had been set on top of it before it was sent down.

The card was brand, spanking new.

Still mint white and all its corners yet pristine which was unusual. The cards were recycled and updated frequently. Whoever it belonged to had been free before being transported to his laboratory and would likely be incredibly pissed off to discover their internment below ground.

He peered into the pod at the peaceful, sleeping features of a Raen Au’Ra, illuminated in soft blue by the technology that kept her in torpor.

Cid owned to being surprised to see the scaled woman heart twisting in his chest a little to see that she was injured.

Auri were curiosities in Garlemald and the Raen were especially rare. This one had clearly been beaten into submission.

The glow of the blue light in the pod painted her skin in soft azures but they did not disguise bruise at her lip and the broken horn at the left side of her small face was instantly visible, as was the bandages around her bare left shoulder.

She’d been dressed in simple, sleeveless Garlean robes, somewhat resembling a Far eastern Ao Dai. A slender silvery grey band adorned the ring finger of her left hand but otherwise she wore nothing else.

He picked up the slender white tablet that contained her file, giving it a quick flick of his wrist to display the screen in 3D where it was easier to read, perusing the information idly. A screen popped up, asking if he accepted and, absent mindedly, Cid pressed his thumb against it to say that he did.

 _YoUr AcCePtAnCe Is NoTeD_ – the tablet commented in an ugly, mechanical voice, confusing Cid who frowned, scrolling through the information to try and figure out what he had just agreed too and cursing himself for not paying more attention.

Jessie always told him to.

Her name, Dainty, and the date and location of her draft followed up the information about her genetics and Cid felt his face fall, blood draining from it.

“What has that fat pain in my butt sent us this time?” Jessie asked as she joined him, glancing around to ensure they had no visitors and then wrapping an arm around his waist. Her words referenced Emperor Solus, rarely did she bother to use his real name or titles.

“Oh no.” Cid murmured, turning to look at Jessie. “I said absolutely not but you know they test everyone anyway! You know how I feel about the practice!”

It was only when the white haired Garlean started protesting so firmly that the penny dropped to Jessie what she was looking at.

A drafted Eorzean bride.  
Jessie yanked her arm from around his waist like she had been burned.

“Cid! How could you?!” she hissed between her teeth.

“I didn’t, Jessie! I swear! 

“Oh didn’t you!?” Jessie seethed, pointing at the file noting that the woman’s information changed to Married: Redacted. “Garleans! You’re all the bloody same!”

Information about Cid was always redacted, that was what happened when you worked on highly secret projects like cloning in Ragnarok internment class Hulks leagues below the earth.

She whirled on her heel and stalked away leaving Cid torn between chasing after her and dealing with unconscious woman in the containment pod. He danced back in forth in place for half a second, paralyzed by indecision.

He loved Jessie, he did, he had for years but the law was not in his favor.  
He was highly favored, he was, he had been for years but no one got to outright disobey the Emperor of Garlemald.

The sound of her slamming her office door somewhere down the corridor made him wince.

She didn’t mean it. She’s just hurt.– Cid tried to console himself, hurt by her words.

He wasn’t like the other Garleans that used the bride draft as an excuse to coerce and abuse the innocent and he knew Jessie knew that, deep down, somewhere below her broken heart.

Cid hated everything about this situation but he was not any more at liberty to complain about it than the poor Au’Ra in the containment pod was.

His stomach lurched, all thoughts of lunch driven from his mind and again his feelings hurt by Jessie’s accusation.

Even in shock and anger it was an unkind thing to say and played upon insecurities that had always plagued him. He had always wondered if, deep down, his Garlean genetics would someday betray him.

If, underneath the logic and genius, his base desires were as twisted and grotesque as the others.

What a fucking mess - Cid ran his hands through his hair several times, trying to figure out what to do next and, for lack of inspiration, turned back to the personnel file he had only half paid attention to earlier.

An urgent communication from above ground caught his attention and Cid opened it quickly, skim reading it with sickened blue eyes.

A missive from those higher up than he reminding him that it was his civic duty to see if the woman could produce Garlean children, along with a knife twisting dig to stop being such a bloody pacifist, throw his new bride on the ground and fuck her into submission.

Cid would very much have liked to told his superiors where to shove their civic duty, instead firing back a terse;

Bride arrived injured. Please reserve all hope on all floor fucking until properly healed to ensure maximum fertility.

And unknowingly dooming those in Limsa Lominsa that had caused her injuries.

Cid’s stomach lurched again.  
This would not go well for him if he did not comply.

 

Movement roused Dainty from her induced sleep, giving a little struggle of pain and instinctively curling into the arms that lifted her gently.

“I know, I know.” A very deep voice soothed. “That don’t feel good on that shoulder, I bet.”

 _Carvallain, I will murder you._ – Dainty thought, half-drunk off the powerful sedatives she had been dosed with and not bothering to open her eyes.

She pressed her face into the neck of the man that carried her, looping her scaled arms around the thick shoulders trustingly.

Cid almost dropped her in surprise, not expecting the affectionate gesture but perceptive enough to realize she thought him someone else. A former lover perhaps.

Dainty presumed the arms that held her so tenderly belonged to the Captain of Kraken Arms.

No doubt the crew, grateful to her for saving Marisolle, had come to drag her out of whatever hole the Garleans had thrown her in to. It made perfect sense to her drug addled mind.

Who else would treat her with such kindness? Fully carrying her in their arms so to a softly lit room and setting her down on cold sheets as Cid set her down in a medical bay.

She was disturbingly light.

He was used to hefting magitek thrice his own height, the slender form of a robe clad Au’Ra was nothing to the thickly built Garlean.

No doubt they had done the best they could for her wounds with the technology available to them in Eorzea but Cid’s laboratory was absolutely cutting edge. Each machine had been built by himself with the guidance and input of the several of Garlemalds foremost minds when it came to the manipulation and restoration of the body.

He was, by training and calling, an Engineer far more than he was a scientist, leaving that sort of thing up to the coterie of mal and jen titled staff. His skill was building things and in this case, he was building people.

Idly Cid wondered if the machines that worked to knit together severed muscle and sinew in her shoulder would do anything for her cracked horn. The machines had never been tested on Au’Ra, they were too rare in Garlemald but Cid thought he recalled that Au’Ra horns would regrow over time, much like hair and fingernails.

If they were comprised of a similar substance to hair and nails then the machines would not be able to do anything to correct their damage.

He looked back to the personnel file for her name so that he could greet her when she opened her eyes.

Now that he looked closer there was scant few details, although an explanation was provided why. An accident, of Garlean doing no less, had left her an amnesiac mute.

She answered to Dainty.  
She was assumed to be near 22 summers

She’d almost held off 4 armed guards with her bare hands.

Cid admitted to feeling a small throb of relief to discover she had at least some form of combat, or military training.

She could fight off an attacker, if she needed to.

Even if that attacker was him although the way she had curled into his arms had sent a bolt of something deeply protective through him.

As much was he was able he would do anything and everything in his power to keep her safe while she resided there.

He vaguely wondered where in all Seven Hells they had found an Au’Ra that matched a Garlean. The chances of that had to calculate to some ridiculously slim percentage that it was considered impossible.  
Let alone an Au'Ra that matched him before his hyper focused mind reminded him she had been Drafted in Lima Lominsa.

Idly Cid wondered if it had been a mistake.  
Perhaps he ought have the head Chichuregon, Carmine mal Avesa, test her himself.

The equipment in the sprawling medical and experimental complex was so much more advanced than what they were given to work with in the field, after all.

If Cid could prove an error it would certainly be an excellent way to put right this awful mess he had suddenly found himself.

Dainty’s eyes slowly opened as the pain in her shoulder began to fade, seeing not the lean, pointed features of an Ishgardian Elezen but the shock white hair and bright blue eyes of Cid nan Garlond.

Intense overwhelming confusion assailed her instantly as she sat up, not liking being leaned over by a stranger.

Who was this person?  
Where was she?

She knew no place like this, all sleek and white and fully humming with magitek and light.

Cid saw instantly the second her eyes lit on the small, oval organ at his forehead.

His Garlean third eye, not a true eye in that it had no sight but instead granted enhanced senses and perception. Her entire body going rigid, spine stiffened almost dead straight as the memories came flooding back.

She’d been drafted.

That was why they had tested her again, to make absolutely sure an Au’Ra like her truly was a match.  
It was utterly unheard of, after all.

“This is a shock, I know but I won’t harm you, I promise.” The man was saying.

He looked familiar.  
Why did he look so familiar?

Her head spun and felt like it had been stuffed full of wool. Her hand went to her cracked horn. The cranial projections functioned for her much like the bones of the inner ear functioned from other Hyuran peoples.

With hers compromised her balance was thrown off.

Dainty groped unhelpfully for something to write with, desperate to communicate. Cid, not understanding her desires thought she was reaching for one of his hands and took one of hers gently.

Close enough – Dainty figured, turning his hand over so that she could spell out a word onto his palm, hoping like Hell he knew Eorzean letters. The ring on her finger glinted in the light.

H-U-S-B-A-N-D ?

Cid gave a small shake of his head, unsure what she was writing. It all looked like and felt like pleasant squiggles against his palm, her fingertips soft as they spelled out the unknown letters.

It was almost intimate, the skin to skin contact.

Dainty frowned, the head spins were getting worse.

She didn’t know the Garlean word for marriage, or husband. Hopefully the words she did know would be enough to get her point across.

Y-O-U-R-S ?

“Oh! Yes. You are mine.” Cid grimaced, then corrected himself. “That is, I am the Garlean that you were matched with. You know High Garlean?”

Dainty hadn’t known there was a difference between Garlean and High Garlean, only that her treasure hunting career had given her the ability to read a smattering of different languages. She knew enough to know what was a treasure map and what was a recipe for fried popotos, at least.

She held her finger and thumb apart a very small amount.

“A little.” Cid acknowledged. “Enough to communicate somewhat.”

Although he could speak common fluently he had never bothered to learn to read Eorzean. It had ever been on his “to-do” list but kept falling behind far more pressing projects.

Dainty nodded, then dropped his hand to hold her own to her head, the motion provoking dizziness severe enough to slightly cross her eyes. If she had still been capable of speech she might of given an unhappy little moan.

“What’s wrong?” Cid asked, watching her still slightly drug fogged eyes, trying to guess what she needed. She made a little twirling motion with her finger, and pointed to her horn. “Spinning? Oh! Dizzy!”

She nodded and instantly regretted it, swaying so badly she tumbled off the bed and into his arms.


	3. Loyalties of a Lair

Another Garlean with a syringe was far from what Dainty wanted in her life at this particular moment but this one at least seemed to only want to dispense a powerful anti vertigo serum into her arm before withdrawing to speak in hushed, concerned tones with the man that was now her husband.

That sent a small bolt of panic through her as she reclined on the medbay bed, waiting for the medicine to take effect.

The two were speaking in low, hushed tones but her hearing was very good for someone without actual ears, able to pick up enough to recognize that the medicus was worried Dainty’s presence would compromise their dangerous mission. The white haired man was insisting that if the other man didn’t want Dainty here HE ought be the one to go tell the Emperor thus, besides, Dainty was Eorzean.

Surely she would not compromise them.

These terse words exchanged the pair separated, leaving Cid to return to his brides’ side with a reassuring smile.

“Feeling better?”

Dainty nodded very carefully, and when the intense waves of dizziness failed to reappear reached for his hand. Cid quickly gave it to her, unsure what to expect.

N-A-M-E?

Cid gave a chuckle, realizing how neglectful he had been not to make proper introductions.

“My name is Cid nan Garlond.”

Recognition flared through her, suddenly previewing in a rush why he had looked familiar to her.

She knew that name. They all knew that name.

Cid Garlond had defected to Eorzea prior to the Calamity, and had assisted the Warriors of Light in attempted to avert that tragedy. He had been missing, presumed dead these 5 years passed although Dainty was well travelled enough to know had been found alive, and was working with the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.

Her heart sank.

He was double agent still loyal to Garlemald and now she was bound to him by law, completely vulnerable and forced to be a loyal wife. It was bad enough being married to a Garlean, being married to one who was actively working against her homeland was awful.

“I take it from your expression you know of the other one.” Cid grimaced and, very confused, Dainty nodded. “Are you well enough to walk?” she nodded again and he lifted her down from the bench to set her on her feet just in time to catch a glare from Jessie who had paused to talk to the medicus in charge of that room.

Seeing her boyfriend…

 _Ex_ \- she reminded herself bitterly.

…with his arms around another woman was exactly as unpleasant as she had ever imagined it might be.

Cid elected to ignore her, guiding Dainty from the room, her footsteps now steady thanks to the medicine. He couldn’t do anything about this. He couldn’t fix this.

As much as he longed to put his arms around Jessie, kiss every single one of her freckles and promise he would make this right he was held hostage by the Draft and his own genetics and the 1 in a million chance of being matched to an Au’Ra.

Maybe he could figure out some compromise that would satisfy everyone but Jessie needed to give him time. Dainty had only been awake for a 40 minutes.

It seemed longer but the clock did not lie.

Cid led Dainty through the Internment Hulk, trying to decide how best to go about explaining to her the rather precarious situation they were currently in.

“First of all, I should explain that the Cid Garlond in Eorzea is me but that I have never left Garlemald. Shortly after my 28th birthday there was an incident upon where I was believed dead. My Father, a genius and utterly insane, created a clone. Unfortunately for my Father that clone retained all of my memories and promptly defected to Eorzea as I had intended to. Do you understand so far?”

Dainty nodded, surprising him at how quickly she had accepted this information as it should have been utterly incomprehensible. “Are you certain? This is not exactly an every day topic of conversation.”

She pointed to the walls but Cid shook his head, unsure of what she was trying to say. In different circumstances he might have found the guessing game of learning to communicate with her fun.

Dainty gestured impatiently for his arm, spelling out “Allagans” against his skin.

“Yes. Allagans technology was used. You are familiar with it somewhat then. Good, that means I can skip over a large portion of the explanation. Suffice to say that clone was killed during the Calamity while I myself was found alive in Bozja and nursed back to health. For reasons I don’t yet know the clone’s memories came to me at the moment of its death and I continue to get “updates” from the ones that are currently active in Eorzea.”

O-N-E-SSSSSS?

He lead her into the room where he and Jessie worked, showing her the Bessie machine, and its twin which could produce clones of himself.

“There have been multiple because, as everyone takes great pains to remind me, I am not the man my Father was and mine aren’t perfect. They dissolve into magitek and goo after 3 months, requiring me to build another and send it to Biggs and Wedge to pick up here the other left off. Clone is technically the wrong word for what I am creating. An automaton would be more correct. No brain or heart or soul, just magitek innards housed in a perfect flesh replica.”

Dainty’s mind whirled, wondering his true loyalties, and wondering if she was game to ask.

Perhaps it was better if she did not know and instead wrapped herself up in ignorance, telling herself his actions were to benefit Eorzea, not Garlemald.

Cid took her through another couple corridors and down an escalator before using his palm to gain them admittance to a deeper level within the Hulk. He wished she could speak, he wished he could tell what was going through that mind of hers.

She was obviously smart, smart enough to know about the Allagans and words in High Garlean and how to adapt in a world without the ability to recall her past or speak but her eyes were so guarded.

His glances at them proved little more than the fact that he could not read them.

Panic crossed Dainty’s features as she realized she had been taken into his private apartments, not another laboratory and all of a sudden she found she needed to know.

She’d not be taken by someone who considered her and her kind savages and wanted them enslaved.

Not willingly anyway.

She didn’t care if the law said he was allowed to touch her, that the marriage had to be consummated within the day and sex performed regularly.

She would not be beguiled into compliance by the mask of kindness he had been showing her. Let him show his true face and put her in chains and shackles if he wanted to fuck her.

“Are you hungry, are you thirsty?” Cid offered. He knew they needed to address the Bride Draft and the expectations placed upon her by it. It did not surprise him her fingers trembled slightly as she pressed them against his palm, although the word she spelled threw him momentarily.

M-I-S-S-I-O-N

Dainty wanted to know what his dangerous mission was.

“You heard that.” Cid observed unnecessarily, taking note that Dainty heard quite well for someone with cranial projections instead of ears. One of which was broken. He moved away from her to sit on one of the barstools that lined the kitchen counter. He wasn’t sure his reluctance to explain his mission to her.

Perhaps because she was a stranger, who knew if he could trust her?

Logically her lack of speech and her status as his drafted bride made it difficult for her to betray him if that became her intentions. She would never be allowed to leave the laboratory, she technically shouldn’t even leave his private apartments.

Perhaps it was because she was Eorzean. The first Eorzean he had ever had the luxury of explaining his plan to and if she didn't see its worth he would be hard pressed to find the motivation to continue with Jessie lost to him.  
Supposedly Garlemald had no plans to invade Eorzea but Cid knew better than most.

Perhaps it was because he knew what this conversation would lead to.

“My mission is to build Emperor Solus a perfect clone army.” He admitted softly.

Dainty felt her stomach tighten.

“My plans, and the plans of everyone in this facility, with full knowledge of the delicate game we play and the risks we take, however, is to build Emperor Solus an imperfect clone army.”

She tipped her head sideways, signifying her confusion as Cid raised his eyes to her guarded eyes.

“Can you imagine what would happen if Solus marched his army into Eorzea?”

Lightning crashed outside the windows, as if to emphasize his point, startling Dainty who thought she had come to understood they were deep underground. She realized quickly it was a Fool’s Portal programmed to mimic the weather conditions above ground, allowing natural light into the apartment.

D-E-A-T-H – Dainty spelled into his palm hesitatingly.

“Exactly. Now imagine what would happen if that entire army melted into protoplasm and magitek on command? My command? If I can do this, if I can figure out why my automatons dissolve, if I can control it, if I just play the long game, I can cripple Garlemald more utterly than any Warrior, or any weapon.”

Dainty felt her jaw drop open a little.

The magitek war machina Garlemald used still required crews to operate.

Crews whose numbers were continuing to dwindle, forcing the institution of the Bride Draft. Not only would Cid’s plans eliminate that awful practice it could turn the City State into a sitting duck, its warmachina abandoned in foreign territories by conscripts that ceased to exist.

Thunder rolled and Cid took a sudden, dangerous grip on Dainty’s wrist;

“But…to have any hope of achieving any of that I need them to think me loyal. I need them to buy me as my Father was. Willing to do anything for the Glory of the Empire and that is why I need you to along with this."

This.

The Bride Draft.

Dainty could hardly fail to perceive that he was saying, her arm enclosed in his grip, locked within his private apartments, clad in only a simple black robe that belted at the waist with nothing below it.

His voice dropped to a low, very grave register, grip tightening when she seemed inclined to pull away, possibly in an attempt to flee. Cid wasn't sure. “I don't want to harm you. I don't but I need them to think me Just. Like. Them."

Lightning crashed outside the windows again, matching the sudden pounding of Dainty’s heart-beat.

Those that Cid needed keep convinced of his loyalty were willing to abuse.  
They were willing to take what was not theirs. They were eager to be violent and break the things given to them, even if those things were other hyuran beings.

They needed to think he was gleefully performing his “civic duty” with the same depraved enthusiasm that they would.

“I didn’t want to put you in restraints but if you intended to fight back like you did in Limsa Lominsa then I will chain you.” Cid warned. “I **have** to stay in the Emperor's favor. My loyalty has to remain above question and above reproach. One hint of rebellion on my part and everything will be lost…. and because of that I **have** to comply with the Draft. They will know if I don't.”

The simulacra of rain pounded against the false windows as the storm miles above them picked up fury and settled in to rage until it wore itself out.


	4. G-O-O-D

Cid’s very blue eyes held Dainty’s as the heart-beats stretched between them.

Her eyes seemed endless.  
Those orange framed purple depths.

The shutters she had been keeping in front of them were gone for the first time since he had lifted her out of the pod and Cid could see the fear that Dainty had been desperately masking.

Dainty groped for his hand with the one he wasn’t holding, her fingers betraying the faintest hint of a tremor.

Years ago, when her Echo had first manifested Dainty had been approached by members the Scions of the Seventh Dawn. Bitter at the world for the hand dealt her she had lashed out at them in hatred, an angry note written to their leader that if Hydaelyn had wanted Dainty to use her Echo to better the world then Hydaelyn should not have stolen her voice, her memories and her home from her.

Hydaelyn’s shield had kept her alive but not whole. Dainty couldn't say she regretted her actions but sometimes, in the small hours of the dawn when sleep eluded her she wondered how many lives had been lost to Primals because of the choice she had made that day.

Cid released her wrist, letting her trace a gentle 1 onto his palm, noting has he had before that there was something pleasant and almost intimate about the sensation of her fingertips against his skin.

If she was going to fight or flee she would have done so by now, he reasoned. It was not as though he had been ambiguous with his intentions. 

“One? One what? One condition? Name it.” Cid asked, not understanding until Dainty shook her head to spell out a word.

The second she drew the F Cid realized what she had been communicating and felt his gut plummet.

1 as in first.  
As in, first time.

As in the poor girl was a damn innocent and if Hell existed he was absolutely going to all Seven of them.

“It shouldn't be like this.” Cid growled softly, disgusted with the entire system. “It shouldn't be like this for you. For any bride.”

Wordlessly Dainty moved her hand to the tie of the robes she had been dressed in, loosening it so that the garment could fall away from her body, silently offering herself to the white haired Garlean.

What was 5 years of her life spent in the bed of a stranger if it meant the destruction of the Garlean armies?

Perhaps the lives that would be saved by Cid and his compatriots would make up for those lost to the Primals because of her.

Cid had to swallow a groan at the sweetly curved, pale body that was exposed to his blue eyes. She was petite but not quite as slender as he had first thought. Her hips, cloaked in pale scales, were fantastically shapely.

Having not known any female Au'Ra he had never particularly given much thought to if they were attractive, although he had always thought scales and tails might, theoretically, be a bit of a turn off.

Even though he had fully requested this but he hadn't quite expected to respond quite so viscerally to seeing her naked. Her mint green hair, pale skin and faintly shimmering scales was stunningly beautiful, the robe pooled at her feet in quiet compliance.

It was arousing in a way Cid really thought he was better than.

The memory of her curling into his arms as he lifted her from the pod rose, unbidden.

Leaving Cid questioning why he suddenly, desperately wanted her to press her face into his neck and curl her arms around his shoulders knowing it was him.

“Will you let me at least try to make this good for you?” Cid asked, rising slowly.

Maybe she would prefer not to be kissed.  
Maybe she would prefer to remain disconnected from the act, face down on the bed and praying to be anywhere else but there.  
Cid would respect it if she did but he had yet to leave a lover wanting and wasn’t keen to start with Dainty.

Dainty nodded and Cid released the breath he hadn’t even realized he had been holding.

If he was trying to keep the relief from his features that he wouldn’t have to torture her he was utterly failing, moving close to her to cup her scaled cheek with one hand, drawing her body against his.

Dainty found herself kissed a little bit before she was ready for it but wasn’t opposed to the idea.

She liked kissing, it was fun.  
It was what had gotten her kicked out of the Monks Guild before her 5th year of training as a monk, after all.

That and sneaking alcohol into the bedrooms.

Cid seemed to be quite good at it, coaxing her lips apart as his arms closed around her body. 

Kissing someone with a beard was interesting, it wasn’t nearly as wiry as she had expected it to be, rasping against her skin.

His mouth moved to her neck a little bit before she was ready to stop being kissed but again, she wasn’t opposed to the idea.  
He drew her to the bedroom to continue, coaxing her to lie down on her back. She squirmed and Cid realized it was because she needed to adjust her tail. 

_That's going to take a little getting used to_ – Cid noted before joining her.

His mouth found hers again, fingers brushing against the bottom of her breasts gently. Dainty tensed, but didn’t make any effort to dislodge his questing hands. 

Her skin and scales became a playground to be explored with his fingertips.

Cid was curious to see she had no body hair as he drew his mouth down her neck, across her collarbones and towards the valley between her breasts. 

Did she shave or was that a bi-product of the scales that mottled her body?

Dainty gave a little squirm.  
Why hadn’t she noticed how warm it was in there before? Or perhaps it was just her.

Cid seemed determined to put his mouth everywhere his hands had touched and Dainty absolutely wasn’t opposed to that particular idea.

She'd have moaned if she was capable of it, reaching for him and soliciting as hiss from Cid has her hand settled directly on his groin and the half-hard shaft of flesh behind the front of his breeches.

“Eager little thing, aren’t you?” Cid smiled, relieved, against her mouth as her hand stroked him, having not really expected much participation from her beyond not panicking or struggling.

One long finger slipped inside her to stroke her, sending her weak at the knees. The room spun, she shook, completely giving up on trying to touch him in return.

“Relax” Cid murmured beside her, moving his hand inside her and pressing kisses to her skin and scales. 

Dainty hadn't even noticed she'd tensed every muscle in her body until he said something, trying to go with the sensations rather than fight them down, as directed.

In hindsight Cid realized he probably should have given her a stiff drink before initiating the “you're getting fucked, one way or another” conversation.

Still, Dainty seemed to to coping with it. It was so hard to tell with her lack of sound but the rolling of her hips was hard to misinterpret. 

Silent but for the sound of the pouring rain, her pounding heartbeat and Cid’s deep voice guiding her to relax into his touches as his thumb started stroking her clit.

Dainty instinctively tried to twist away from the sensation, over stimulated and not yet ready for quite that bold a touch when no one else had ever tended to her so, not even herself.

Cid kissed her again, easing his hand from between her legs to let her calm a little, turning his attention to her pert, perfect breasts and worshiping them with his mouth until she gave what would have been a long sigh.

She was plenty wet enough to take him now and was clearly too nervous to experience release yet.

Dainty felt Cid's weight settle between her legs, his body arching over hers, mouth demanding kisses from her.

She throbbed with a desire for something she had no name for. Not even a single word to write against the Garlean's skin.

Dainty managed to drag open her eyes and looked up at the Garlean above her. The blush on her cheeks and heavy lidded, hazy look in her eyes betrayed her as a woman in the throes of passion in a glance.

The lust written across her delicate face damned him to all Seven Hells in an instant.

Cid forgot himself, gripping her backside in his hands and slamming into her in 1 sharp thrust that turned Dainty’s hands into claws at his shoulders and arched her back, the breath knocked out of her.

“Sorry, sorry.” Cid soothed, the pain in his shoulders reminding him that he was supposed to be being gentle with her. He clearly couldn't be trusted with the Auri but he would be dead before he stopped when the woman was looking at him like that.

Cid caught her sweetly pouted mouth in a kiss, soothing the sting inside her with heated kisses and wishing like hell he could have heard whatever sound she desired to make when he was lodged fully home.

Whether it had been a cry of protest or one of pleasure, he longed to hear her voice.

Cid began to move his hips slowly, feeling her walls clamping all along his shaft, resisting the invasion and the withdrawal of his cock.

The feeling was heavenly, her warmth and wetness against every inch of him.

His hands were drawn down her legs ever so slowly, bending them up at the knees and hitching them over his hips so that he speared incredibly deep inside her.

Dainty couldn't moan but her breaths were coming out of her in short, sharp bursts against his lips as what would have been noises of pleasure left her ruined throat.

She wasn’t sure anymore was pleasure and what was pain from being stretched open around a man for the first time in her life. She wouldn't have even called it pain. More like a slightly too intense tickle.

She had no idea what her body was doing, only that it was wracked with pleasure, one hand gripping the sheets as he thrust inside her, the other hand gripping his bicep hard enough to leave indentations in his skin.

She broke their exchange of kisses to tip her head back, elongating her neck.

Cid attacked the scales there with kisses as he sped up a little.

Dainty fully writhed beneath him as if there were fire in her veins. She felt like she had fire in her veins.

Her perfect breasts begged for his attention as she arched, doing nothing to prevent him licking and sucking on her breasts. His mouth coming tauntingly close to her pebbled, over sensitive nipples but never actually touching them before flicking his tongue along the underside of each in turn.

Dainty’s head thrashed, her toes where curling of their own volition. Why were her does curling, why did that feel so good? Oh Gods, what was that sensation in her core that felt like it was going to stop her heart?

Cid was possessed by a desire to see her face, lifting his face from her breasts to watch her eyes roll and flutter closed.

She was so blessedly close, every breath a symphony of desire.

Cid was starting to lose control himself, a heavy, pulsing heat settled into his veins and fucking her faster and faster, inching her closer to release.

Her mouth gaped open, shuddering hard enough that if he hadn’t had a solid grip on her hips she would have squirmed away from him as she fell into the slow building climax that seemed to make the stability of the bed whirl out from beneath her.

The build-up of his own release was almost overwhelming now, feeling her muscles clench and spasm all along his cock.

Cid slowed down his rhythm slightly, but it did little to abate the pressure building in the base of his shaft.

It was hopeless, he was utterly done.

His load came gushing out, filling her erotically.  
Every pump sending spasms down his spine, and causing him to groan in ecstasy.

All the while, Dainty was shaking and grinding her hips against him instinctively, riding out her high.

Cid gulped down a breath of air as they held each other, Dainty clinging to him, pressing her face into his shoulder and trembling.

Her breathing was heavy, almost as if in relief.

“Dainty?” Cid asked carefully, maneuvering himself to free an arm and stroke a scaled cheek. Had he hurt her? He hadn't mean to be quite so demanding towards the end there.

She opened her eyes to look up at him, the lust stripped from her features, reverting them back to the calm stoicism he had observed so far. “Are you alright?”

Dainty nodded. 

Her eyes were utterly unreadable again.

Her silences would bother him, Cid knew this instantly although he could hardly blame her for being mute. 

It was just that guilt was starting to coil in his belly and he desperately needed her words to reassure him he had not fully tortured her by consummating their marriage.

It was hard not to feel like he had just cheated on Jessie when that midlander and he had shared the bed he had Dainty were currently occupying the night before.

Cid knew logically that he and Jessie were done the second Dainty tested as a genetic match to him.  
They had to be, that was the law but that didn't change the recriminations dancing their way through his mind.

Thinking of one woman while still tangled up intimately with another was not the sort of person Cid wanted to be and he forced his thoughts back to the here and now.

Cid withdrew from Dainty gently, moving beside her to gather her up in his arms and trying to push aside the guilt in his stomach. He refused to ask a woman who had not even been given the liberty of collecting her personal things before they dragged her, broken and unconscious from Limsa, to be given to him for comfort.

He should be comforting her, not the other way around.

They lay together, his larger body curled around hers for several moments, just listening to the pouring rain until it occurred to Cid that Dainty was writing something against his arm where she could reach without leaving the circle of his embrace.

“What was that?” Cid questioned. He hoped it hadn't been a long sentence because she would have to start over.

G-O-O-D.

“Thank the Gods for that.” Cid replied, snuffling his face into her hair and kissing the top of her head. “I didn't hurt you, did I?”

She shook her head, again writing GOOD against his arm, reminding Cid that she had indicated she knew only a small amount of shared language.

“I have got to teach you more Garlean.” Cid observed, before an alert of an urgent communication on the slim white tablet like device they all used the communicate with the outside world and within the massive interment hulk interrupted them

Cid instantly released her, rolling out of bed and grabbing for the tablet having been expecting this.

A quick glance told him everything he needed to know.

He was being summoned above ground, no doubt to be yelled at that it didn’t matter that his Bride was injured, her wants and needs were irrelevant unless they furthered the cause of producing a Garlean child.

He shook the tablet to dismiss the message with a deep scowl, beginning to dress.

Dainty sat up, unsure if she wanted him to stay or glad he was apparently leaving.

Cid had, rather impressively, managed to make her first time about as loving as she had ever imagined it ought to be but she had certainly always thought there would be a lot more post sex snuggling than a kiss on the head before he abandoned the bed.

Cid finished reclothing himself before looking at Dainty again. 

“I have to go upworld but help yourself to anything in here…”

Dainty instantly made a gesture for something to write with. “… none, I’m afraid and I have a feeling…” he picked up her identity card and tapped his personal tablet against it. As he rather suspected would happen it gave an angry blip and denied him access. “… of course…. no communication with the outside world, or anything that might help a Bride escape her husband.”

A reminder of the barbaric and insidious protocols of the Draft cut through the pleasant endorphin rush in Cid’s mind. His lips twisted bitterly. “You’re limited to reading books. Fortunately, I have plenty.”

That was true at least, almost every wall in his apartment had bookshelves on some sort on it and they were lined with tome after tome.

“I would like to suggest that we don’t do that again.” Cid began gently, sitting down on the bed to face Dainty. Her head tipped slightly sideways in question and, in different circumstances, Cid would have found the action adorable but he was too distracted. “Not until you request it. I very much appreciate your willingness today, I cannot possibly overstate how necessary it was that I go to this meeting covered in the scent of you. It will buy us time and turn attention away from us, as they will be quite certain I am doing exactly as I should. It will be a month yet before I am next due to deliver a report on our progress down here. We have that much time at least to at least try to let regular intercourse develop more naturally between us.”

He wondered if she fully understood what he was saying, despite how quickly she nodded that she did.

It did seem terribly reasonable to Dainty. She had apparently gotten exceptionally lucky to be matched to a Garlean who felt as she did about the draft.

It existed, it could not be ignored but certain steps could be taken within the boundaries of it to at least try to make their lives for the next 5 years tolerable.

Cid had never particular considered the notion of being able to read minds but he might have killed someone for the ability now. Or at least the faintest of indications as to what she was thinking. What was cooking behind those impassive purple and orange eye?

“It will likely be late before I am back. Food will be brought to you although you won’t be able to leave my apartments. Again, help yourself to anything you need.”


	5. The Mother Speaks

To describe the air in his work room as frigid the next morning would have been to describe the surface of the sun as “quite hot.”

The ice and frost in Jessie’s tone and eyes as they worked in utter silence was palpable.

“Jessie, can we please at least try to be friends?” 

The ice-filled glare went up a notch.

“What did you expect me to do, Jessie? Refuse and have any of the yae Galvus’ come strolling down here to personally audit us and realize what we are doing?” Cid implored.

He had to stay beyond suspicion, for all their sakes.  
She knew that.

“You could have at least been slightly cut up about it.” Jessie muttered, unable to argue the previous point. It was her pride that was wounded more than anything.

How quickly the man who had told her he loved her set her aside in favor of an insipid silent Eorzean.

How quickly Cid, who had ever been a stickler for routine and schedules, had abandoned their research and projects in favor of going to bed with the Auri.

How often Jessie had asked that they spontaneously shove the research aside to just enjoy each other only to be denied with talk of timelines and responsibility. 

Yet he had taken Dainty to his bedroom at lunchtime, not reappearing until the next morning as if he had not a care in the world.

“I am!” Cid insisted. 

“Oh? Was that before or after you instantly accepted the terms and conditions of the Draft you supposedly loathe?” Jessie fired back, feeling a fool.

She had loved him, butterflies in her stomach when he smiled and blushes when he complimented her, loved him. She thought him everything Garleans should have been, strong, moral, resolute and good.

To discover that he was no different than the others stung more than anything else. How could she have been so blind?

“For Hells sake Jessie, I wasn’t paying attention. I just skim read it, you know I always do that.”

“I do know that.” Jessie agreed, smiling dangerously, flashing neat rows of white teeth. “And I totally believe you but do tell me, Cid, did you manage to even wait an entire hour before fucking the Auri whether she wanted it or not?”

His own guilt about that left him fumbling for a response, despite having the perfectly valid argument that he had known he would be summoned and questioned.

“I didn't think so.” Jessie's eyes skewering threw him as she looked him up and down in disgust. “A good man once told me the inability to say no isn’t a yes. At least I thought he was a good man.”

Cid shoved away from the work bench, stalking out into the hallway in a fury, utterly unable to defend himself and tormented by that.

He had uttered the phrase what seemed a million years ago when discussing with Jessie what they would do if she was forced to marry and promising to use his influence to prevent that as long as he possibly could.

The eyes of his subordinates followed him as he went. Cid would have loved to have pretended he didn't recognize the mixture of pity and disgust lingering where once had been only respect.

He wanted to scream in frustration.

Did they think he wanted this?

He had tried to refuse to give blood to be matched but the bloody Emperor wouldn't have heard twice of the vaunted Garlond family name going extinct.

He and Dainty were both victims of the circumstances but because he was Garlean he was cast as the monster.

 _You threatened to chain and rape her. You are a monster. Just like them._ – His conscious reminded him, managing to sound exactly like Jessie.

Cid paled at the memory.  
He hadn't meant it like that but Gods, yes he had.

To what end were the means justified?

Was the price for the world being free from Garlean tyranny to be every moral he claimed to posses?

Dainty had consented..dropping her robe could hardly be interpreted as anything else... although Cid was aware he really hadn't given her much of a choice.

She'd enjoyed it at least.

That thought wasn't as nearly as comforting as it had been yesterday. 

Absolutely guilt stricken Cid returned to his private chambers.

He had left Dainty in his bed that morning, she had been asleep when he returned and still asleep when he left. She was clearly indulging a lazy morning and as much as he would have liked to have lingered there, to feel her write greetings on his skin and reassure himself she was not fearful of him the entire facility was on a strict schedule.

Both the one dictated to them by Solus and their own, traitorous timeline to get work accomplished while no one was looking too hard. 

Too much deviation from their schedule might impede his ability to produce a fresh automaton to send to Eorzea and they desperately needed the information those fake Cid's fed back to them. 

As Cid, Jessie and the rest of them were living ghosts, entombed malms beneath the earth, those automatons were the only way they had to keep track of the key players on Eorzean soil, Gaius van Baelsar and his Tribuni and Regula van Hydrus and Varis yae Galvus.

They were the only way to know the time line they were needed to beat before Solus declared total and utter war once more.

But Cid needed to see Dainty’s face now. Jessie’s words cutting him too close, and too sharply. 

He needed to see her calm features with those unreadable eyes and feel her write GOOD into his skin to reassure himself she wasn't traumatized.

Even if it was a lie.

 

Awareness when before had been nothing tugged at Dainty’s mind and she found herself floating in the space between worlds, a slowly turning crystal thousands upon thousands of malms high hovering in front of her.

 _Protect him…. he loses faith...._ – Hydaelyn begged faintly.

_Protect him from what?_

_Words and thoughts._

_And how am I supposed to combat those. Your attempts at forging me into your Champion left me a broken mute._ – Dainty snarled, still able to talk in her mind at least. – _Shall I take to beating anyone who says an unkind word and end up clapped in chains? If you so desire to see me tortured further still I am sure my husband wouldn’t mind obliging you. I am reasonably certain he is into that._

Dainty had felt that shield around her that day, strong and true and felt it withdraw when she needed it most to let the roof come crashing down on her neck and had never forgiven the Mother Crystal for it.

_You must turn aside the untrue accusations that worm their way into his heart and linger there the rot it._

_How?! How, you stupid glowing fuck!! I can't speak! I can barely communicate with him, let alone anyone else!_

_You must preserver. You know not the devastation you can turn aside if you can keep him on this path._

A blue light, much weaker than it had been as a child enveloped her and the darkness of sleep raced in once more.

 

“Dainty?” Cid called gently, entering the room.

An awful, garbled noise answered him. “Dainty!”

In an instant Cid realized she couldn’t breathe, her eyed wide with terror and lips moving soundlessly as she tried to force air down her blocked passageways, flinging herself out of the bed with the force of her struggles.

She choked and vomited blood.

Cid flew across the room in a second, hauling her across his shoulder and fully sprinting for a medbay in a heart-beat.

The commotion of his heavy footfalls as he ran drew curious onlookers. Noise reverberated down the numerous corridors, summoning those used to nothing more sinister than the gentle hum of magitek to find out what all the noise was about.

Fortunately for Cid several of the spectators were those with mal, and jen titles, marking them as Medicus and Chiurgeons. Far better equipped to deal with whatever emergency this was than Cid, who was a nan.

“What did you do to her this time?” Jessie asked archly from the doorway, arms folded as the medical personal took over tending to Dainty from Cid, who hovered nervously.

“I didn't do anything!” Cid protested.

“Yeah right.” Jessie snorted. “Force her to suck your dick?”

“Jessie!” Cid growled.

He had been so willing to forgive her harsh words, even though he was internalizing them nastily, knowing they were born of a broken heart but that was too far.

The others apparently thought so too as rather than looking at him disapprovingly they were looking at the red haired midlander instead.

None spoke up in his defense though, Cid noted. Not even Carmine mal Avesa, who had a sharp tongue and a comment for everything.

Cid counted these people as his closest and most loyal friends and the silence felt like a betrayal.

“Out.” he ordered, hoping his voice didn't sound quite as pained and pathetic as it sounded to him. “Every one but the medics.... get out.”

They went, Jessie getting in one last dig about his guilty conscious.

Cid tried to ignore it, turning back to Dainty wondering how much more abuse the poor girl was going to have to endure at the hands of the Garleans.

Her voice and memory lost to an accident they caused, her freedom stolen by their abusive Bride Draft, her innocence sacrificed to protect people who thought her a curiosity and now she had been sickened by, presumably, the food they gave her.

At this rate if she survived 5 years as his bride it would be a small miracle.

Dainty was coughing weakly, a medicus taking a reading at her chest with a stethoscope as Carmine, the head Chichurion of the facility was commenting idly;

“If I hadn't just witnessed that with my own eyes I would never have believed it possible.” He picked up a chunk of bloody something that had been expelled from Dainty, rinsing it in 1 of the sinks and dropping it into a jar of preserving solution to admire it.

“What? What happened?” Cid frowned.

“You know, I thought you were against human experimentation, Cid but whatever you did to her...”

“I didn't...!” Cid almost erupted with rage, his hands clenched into fists, entire body tensed like a over coiled spring. 

“A joke! A joke, Cid.” Carmine soothed, throwing up his hands defensively. 

“Carmine! For fucks sake! Not the time!! A Bride almost DIED in my arms!”

Cid was twitchy about exactly three things. Death, human experimentation and the Emperor finding out about their traitorous intentions. Teasing him about any of them was a low blow. Teasing him about all of them, now, when he was already in an ugly situation was flat unkind and Carmine felt appropriately scolded for his button pushing.

“You are right. That was poor form and I apologize. Let me explain...It would appear that some scar tissue in Dainty's throat tore lose, filling it with blood. This blocked her airway, which prompted the choking. The convulsions and strain placed on her body while struggling for air prompted the vomiting.  
The vomiting ripped this trouble maker the rest of the way so that it could be expelled...” Carmine gave the jar of solution a swirl to prompt the almost palm sized mass of scar tissue to dance and jiggle in place in the liquid. “... now that Jenn has stemmed the bleeding with a little clotting solution, she should be just fine.”

“I'm going to give her another anti- vertigo shot.” Jenn jen Jeyne, Carmine’s direct assistance added. “With your permission, Cid?”

Cid nodded, relieved. Taking half a second to recall it was his place to make medical decisions for her, even though it shouldn't have been.

“She will need strict diet of soft foods and liquids to be adhered to for a week. The wound in her throat is excessive, possibly even larger than the original one. If it is not treated very gently enough scar tissue will form this time to block her breath and not just her voice.” Carmine warned, then gave a saucy grin. “That means no blow jobs, I'm sure you'll be ever so devastated.”

“Dammit, Carmine, I wasn't....!”

“And, I will need to check up on her daily to make sure any scabbing is attended to before it can break lose and we have a delightful repeat of this entire affair.”

“Great, ok. I'm going to get back to work and leave her here under your observation.” Cid decided.

“Oh no you bloody don't.” Carmine retorted, setting down his jar to wag his spectacles at Cid. “I have too much to do myself. She's your wind-up sex toy, you babysit her.”

“Carmine!”

The scientist clutched his stomach, howling with laughter at the look of horrified indignation on Cid's face;

“Bwahahaa! You're so bleeding PRECIOUS about her, Cid.”

“Wouldn't you be?” Cid protested wishing someone, anyone, would show him the slightest bit of sympathy and compassion right now. Normally he quite enjoyed Carmine's ribbing, which was known to be particularly brutal. “Do you know what happens to us if she turns up dead?!”

“Yep! Investigations, top to bottom. We'd be utterly fucked.” Carmine agreed cheerfully. “You best keep a close eye on her then. Oh won't that be lovely. Take your wife to work week!”

The other Garlean's behavior was exactly in character for Carmine mal Avesa but Cid was far from in the mood for it, stomping over to Dainty and scooping her up into his arms without permission.

He didn't like the idea of taking her anywhere near Jessie but Jessie had been his assistant and co-conspirator so long that their work was utterly and unbreakabley intertwined by now. He absolutely could not ignore his work for the day solely to watch Dainty when she could relax in the lab as easily as in his private chambers, Jessie's ire or no.

Dainty curled into his arms, her arms twining around his neck and resting her head against his shoulder with a soft little cough and Cid utterly melted in an instant.

Carmine watched the tender expression come over Cid's features as he left, carrying the Au'Ra and leaned towards Jenn.

“10 to 1 Jessie explodes before lunch.”

Jenn sighed, and went in search of earplugs. He thought Jessie a good friend and rapier smart to boot but the woman's temper was going to be pushed too far to see the gentle way Cid looked at Dainty.

It was only a matter of time.


	6. Cough. Cough.

_cough cough_

Jessie’s eyes went to Cid, glaring at him as the silence was interrupted by Dainty’s soft coughing.

“What? It’s not like she can help it.” Cid muttered, his goggles across his eyes. They were working on building a magitek skeleton for a fresh Cid automaton and although the task was not demanding, they had done it many times before, Jessie was finding herself distracted by the coughing that was occasionally coming out of the Au’Ra in the corner.

Cid had set her up with one of the adjustable beds and a variety of books so that she could recline and stay out of the way but he could keep an eye on her.

Dainty was struggling to make heads or tails of any of the books with her limited knowledge of the languages they were written in.

She did feel as though she had come to understand that Garlean and High Garlean were essentially the same language, however. One having evolved from the other over time so that the ancient form of the language was distinct enough to be given its own name.

_cough cough_

The tickle in her throat was driving her nuts, it felt like one solid coughing fit would cure it, although Jenn and Carmine had both cautioned against that.

Sipping water helped but only for the brief moment the liquid was travelling down her throat.

Dainty tried to focus on her book, gave up, and instead started watching Cid and Jessie work. They made a good team, moving seamlessly beside and around one another, so used to working together.

There was a tension between them, however that seemed to go beyond the nasty comments and jibes that Jessie had been making. 

The redhead had made it clear she loathed Dainty’s presence although the Au’Ra was soundly ignoring that.

She didn’t choose to be here, she didn’t choose to be a mute, she didn’t choose any of this. Being mad at her for what was being inflicted upon her was stupid in Dainty’s opinion and if she had had any method of communication to convey that she would have.

_cough cough_

“Ugh!” Jessie threw up her hands and stomped out of the room.

Cid put down the tool he was working with, sliding his goggles up to his forehead, pushing some hair out of his eyes and momentarily covering the Garlean third eye. With a sigh and what he hoped was a reassuring smile he approached Dainty.

Jessie wasn’t wrong, the auri’s coughing was really annoying but Cid was sensitive to the fact that she absolutely couldn’t help it.

“Do you need more water or anything?” Cid offered, seeing her glass only half full.

Dainty nodded, then coughed. 

She would have loved to have asked for some honey, knowing it would help sooth her throat but didn’t know the word in Garlean and Cid did not know it in Eorzean.

She doubted her skills at pantomiming a bee long enough to get her point across.

She reached for his hand.

J-E-S-S-I-E, followed by a heart, and then a line drawn sharply through it and a question mark.

“Yes.” Cid agreed. There was no point denying it, after all and he was impressed with her perceptiveness.

S-O-R-R-Y

“Not your fault. Nor is the way she’s choosing to react to this.” Cid assured her with a tight smile. 

His heart was just a broken up over Jessie as hers was over him but she was not affording him the same degree of sympathy that he was affording her.

Jessie returned, Jenn in tow.

“Can’t you give her a numbing solution or something?!” Jessie insisted, gesturing at Dainty.

“Now who is forcing her to do things she may or may not want to do?” Cid commented archly, unimpressed with how quickly Jessie had hypocritically decided Dainty ought be dosed with something without asking.

That shut Jessie’s mouth quickly, and angry flush on her cheeks and flash in her eyes.

_cough cough_

“It wouldn’t be the worst idea, although it will mean she can’t eat anything for the next 2-3 hours.” Jenn told Cid who huffed, half rolling his eyes;

“Dainty is right there! She’s not deaf, she’s not stupid, she’s just mute! I should not have to explain this to the bunch of intellectuals we are all supposed to be!”

Cid was getting frustrated, and it showed in his voice.

Jenn, feeling properly rebuked, turned to Dainty. 

“I can stop the coughing but at the cost of your ability to swallow for a couple hours. Not even water, lest it go down your windpipe while your neck is too numb to tell the difference.”

Dainty weighed up what she disliked the least. Being hungry or the tickle in her throat and decided being hungry wasn’t so bad. She had been outright starving before so not having her lunch until 2 instead of at 12 was hardly torture.

She moved her head, tipping her chin up so that Jenn could administer a dose of numbing solution directly into her neck via syringe with a slight wince as it bit home in the sensitive skin.

“All set.” Jenn told Cid, then quickly corrected himself to tell Dainty. “All set.”

“Thanks, Jenn.” Cid answered as Dainty gave a thumbs up. Jessie returned to the magitek skeleton, muttering about finally being able to work in peace. “How’s the books, do you need something different?”

G-O-O-D

Dainty doubted he’d been able to bring her anything in Eorzean since he had admitted to not being able to read it. What she had was likely to be no better or worse than anything else he would bring her, so she may as well just stick with it.

“Ok. Back to work.” Cid stated unnecessarily, about to pull away when Dainty leant up suddenly and pressed her mouth fleetingly against his. It was a quick kiss, soft and almost innocent and she blushed after it, leaving the Garlean blinking in surprise.

“Ugh. You could fucking not.” Jessie growled, purposefully just loud enough she could claim it was meant to be under her breath, but the others could still hear it. 

Cid, torn between placating Jessie and kissing Dainty could do little more than give himself a small mental shake and return silently to work.


	7. You Can Still Do Everything Right, And Lose

“Dainty… Dainty, wake up.”

Cid’s voice sounded anxious and harried and the way he shook her awake as not precisely gentle. 

She reached for his chest, trying to draw a question mark, expecting it to be bare and instead finding it covered in the white and black tunic he perpetually wore. He was fully dressed despite it being still dark confusing her sleep addled mind further.

His mouth found hers insistently, a rough, demanding kiss as his hands where fumbling for the simple nightdress she slept in, sending a bolt of panic through Dainty.

True to his word Cid had not touched her in the prior two weeks, letting her come to him as desired.

She had kissed him a couple times.

He had been so very sweet when taking care of her, after all.

Making sure Carmine didn’t tease her too heavily when checking her wounded throat. Making sure Jessie wasn’t too unkind as she convalesced in their laboratory, watching them work together.

Yelling at them when they referred to her as a his wind-up sex toy.

He even made she wasn’t dizzy as her horn regrew and that she always had soft palatable foods to eat that would not re-damage her neck.

But other than kisses she had not yet felt comfortable going further, and Cid had not pushed.

Until now.

“I’ve been summoned immediately. As in right now. I’m so sorry but I have to do this.” He was saying, leaving Dainty reeling and rapidly trying to catch up as Cid was pulling her to straddle his lap.

She put her arms loosely around his shoulders and stomping down the urge to fight back. Every instinct was telling her to slap and bite and punch and kick. To fight off this grasping, clawing presence helping itself to her body.

One long finger swept inside her as his mouth worked on her throat, trying to coax at least a little arousal in her and maintain his own. He didn’t have the luxury of time, having gotten himself hard with his own hand before reaching for Dainty.

Her first time being penetrated hadn’t hurt but this did, Dainty discovered as Cid entered her quickly, not able to take the time to be gentle.

A silent cry of protest escaped her, Cid’s hands gripping her hips tightly, bouncing her on him.

She was so tight, it didn’t take long to get there.

Cid withdrew from her almost instantly after coming, zipping up and leaving her alone in the bed, unfulfilled and panting slightly.

“Here, go back to sleep.” Cid commented roughly, not able to meet her eyes and setting a sleeping potion on the nightstand before, in a whirl of white and black attire, he was gone.

Tears prickled at Dainty’s eyes, feeling used and discarded.

 _It could have been worse_ – she reminded herself. He was treating her a hell of a lot more kindly than some might have, and had been diligent not to touch her unduly since that first night but this thought failed to make her feel any better.

The unpleasant sensation of Cid’s leavings dripping from within her to smear on her thighs provoked a curl of disgust. – _He could have at least told me I was a good girl before he left._

The potion on the nightstand drew her eyes and she wondered why he had had it on hand. Neither of them had displayed any trouble sleeping thus far before, with a bolt to her gut that left her blinking fresh tears, she realized he must have been keeping it close in case of needing to use it on her if she resisted him.

A hand went across her mouth trying to choke back a sob before grabbing the potion and gulping it down to collapse in tears against the pillows.

 

 _I wonder if Cid changed the locks_ \- Jessie thought idly, holding her palm against the identification node that would grant her access to the Engineers private chambers. The familiar swish of the doors opening greeted her, proving her theory that Cid would be too distracted to recall that his ex-girlfriend still had complete access to the apartments.

Jessie didn’t particularly want to intrude on the private space, or see Dainty residing within them where Jessie herself once happily and frequently dwelled but Jessie needed Cid’s spare keycard to turn on his computer.

She, unfortunately, needed some of his files to cross reference her work.

Cid normally left it for her when he was summoned above ground but had obviously forgotten this time.

She must still be sleeping. Nice for some – Jessie thought with a wry twist of her lips when no Dainty appeared to question what she was doing there. The Midlander poked her head into the bedroom, expecting to find the Au’Ra snuggled blissfully in the sheets, possibly snoring.

Finding Dainty sprawled out on the bed naked, the sheets messy and half off the bed and her hair tangled, weeping inconsolably into the sheets punched Jessie hard in the chest.

Somehow the Au'Ra’s tail drooping pathetically off the side of the mattress was the worst part.

It was obvious what had happened and being confronted it with it plummeted Jessie’s heart to her feet.

_Gods I am never going to complain ever again. My boyfriend had to break up with me, oh boo hoo…look at what is happening to that poor woman… and regularly!_

Jessie moved into the room slowly, making a soft noise, like one might approach a scared animal before gently stroking Dainty’s hair to try and soothe her.

“Shhhhh, it’s okay… you’ll be okay.”

A silent sob shook the Au’Ra’s body.

 _Fucking Hells Cid, was this really necessary?_ – Jessie questioned.

She knew the risks they were all taking every single day they woke up and continued to further their goals of defying the Emperor but even still it was hard to justify it when a mute, vulnerable Eorzean was the 1 paying the price for their secrecy. 

Slowly Dainty’s tears abated and she looked at Jessie unsteadily.

“Only 4 years, 11 months and 2 weeks to go.” Jessie offered, trying to coax a little smile from the other woman and failing. She gave a grimace, and slipped one of her personal sleeping potions from the bottom of her bag, she didn’t use them often but learning to sleep alone again had provoked a little insomnia. Jessie offered it to Dainty with a soft; “Here, try and sleep it off. Maybe you’ll have a nice dream and forget all about it for a while.”

Dainty took it with a small nod.

The one Cid had given her had utterly failed to kick in yet although that didn’t surprise Dainty.

Years spent developing a tolerance to drink and drugs by indulging them frequently as a Lominsan Pirate and years spent building up a tolerance to poison as a Monk were working against her.

“There you go. You won’t even remember why you were crying when you wake up.” Jessie promised, slipping off the bed to collect what she needed and depart, confident she had done what small thing she could to help Dainty.

 

“Dainty?”

It was her arm hanging limply off the side of the bed, not her lack of answer that was the first indication that something was wrong.

It wasn’t unusual that she didn’t come to greet him when he called her name, often being asleep when he returned to the apartment, or buried under a small pile of books. Being mute, she could hardly answer back either.

The second was the unnatural way her head lolled against the pillows, her limbs and tail all spread out as if every bone in her body had been removed.

“Dainty!” Cid yelped, flying across the room.

Her skin was ice-cold to the touch. “Shit! Dainty!? Dainty!!”

An investigating of her neck displayed no pulse although pressing his ear against her chest proved the faintest of shallow breaths still remained.

“FUCK!” Cid yelled, grabbing the rag doll like woman and fleeing for Carmine’s med room as fast as his legs would take him, again drawing spectators as he quickly as he shoved her into a medbay that would, hopefully, prolong her life long enough to figure out what the Hell had happened this time.

“Now what delightfully weird thing has she done?” Carmine asked, utterly oblivious to the seriousness of the situation.

Last time she was here she had managed to cough up her own vocal chords, which was fairly high on Carmine’s list of weirdest things a patient had ever done and he was frankly looking forwards to seeing if Dainty could top that oddity.

“I don’t know!”

“You never do.” Carmine sighed, reaching for a tablet to begin his assessment.

“Will you relax? She’s just sleeping. I gave her a sleeping potion.” Jessie commented, rolling her eyes at Cid’s anxiety, which was clearly pushing roof raising levels as she ordered everyone back to work leaving just herself, Cid, Carmine and his perpetual shadow, Jenn, in the medbay.

“Why did you give Dainty a sleeping potion?” Cid asked, voice dropping to a dangerous register as he turned slowly. He would address why the Midlander was in his private apartments later, right now he just needed to figure out what was going on.

“Because you left her naked and sobbing in your bed, asshole.” Jessie shot back, still ticked at him for that.

“Jessie…” Cid began in horrified tones, clenching his fists. “… I gave Dainty a sleeping potion.”

“Oh and I am going to bet neither one of you geniuses bothered to tell her Garlean potions are about 6 times more concentrated than Eorzean potions either and she drank the entirety of both.” Carmine supplied in a completely unhelpful, chipper tone of voice, settling a magitek device on Dainty’s chest that displayed she had the faintest of pulse yet.

Cid and Jessie’s mouths dropped open at the same time.  
The slender auri had taken enough of the stuff to kill a grown Roegadyn.  
It had all gone wrong on a simple mistake.

“Well, looks like we get to watch a heart stop today. How fun!”

“Carmine!”

“What? We’re fucked, Cid.” Carmine laughed. “May as well laugh about it.”

“Is there nothing that can be done? To flush her system?” Jessie asked in slow dawning terror.

There would be an investigation.

Matches were just too rare and a Bride matched to so influential a name as Garlond turning up dead was going to draw a lot of attention from the exact sort of people whose attention they needed to avoid.

No one would believe for a second that this was an accident, especially not when the hands that delivered the fatal liquid belonged to a jilted lover.

They might buy Cid’s contribution to this catastrophe as oversight on the part of a stressed Engineer but they absolutely would not buy the idea that Jessie hadn’t fully poisoned her rival in a love struck rage.

“It’s already in her bloodstream, short of draining and replacing her blood which she is far too weak to survive, nothing.”

“What about dilution? Adding blood? That wouldn’t weaken her further.”

“Even if we could find a match in time among us, which is doubtful considering none of us are Au’Ra, there isn’t enough room in the body to hold as much blood as would be needed to dilute that much sedative.”

Cid looked at the display. The pauses between each heartbeat seemed a little longer than the last.  
It clearly would not be long now.

“Oh good, I’m a rapist and a murder, just what I wanted to be when I grew up.” Cid garbled, feeling like the floor was dropping out from beneath him and planting his face in his hands.

He really couldn’t escape his Garlean blood after all and that poor Au’Ra’s fate had been decided the second she was matched to his poisonous existence.

“…maybe we can say she did it to herself?” Jenn suggested, a hopeful glint in his eyes. “She would hardly be the first Bride to take that option, right? A freeborn sailor, now confined underground, longing for her beloved ocean… people have killed themselves for less.”

“An investigation will still be performed and even if they do come to that conclusion we’ll still be strung up for allowing her to get her hands on the potions in the first place.” Jessie reminded the younger man.

“We may as well go back to work.” Carmine suggested blithely, scrolling idly through Dainty’s personal file. He hadn’t known she was a sailor and found that vaguely interesting enough to go snooping in her file to see what else he had not known about her. “There is nothing to be done save hope we covered our bases well enough to endure the coming shitsh...… huh! Now that IS interesting….”

“What, Carmine?” Cid demanded when the man did not continue. He was running through scenarios in his head on how to ensure that his work survived this. Maybe he if sacrificed himself, claiming full responsibility for Dainty’s death, they wouldn’t look too hard at what the others were doing.

Jessie was smart, she could do it without him. It might set the time line back 10, or even 15 years but Jessie could do it. Nor would it be too hard to sell the idea that he had been drugging her to force her compliance in the task of begetting children and had gone a little overboard, Cid believed.

“It took 8 bottles of sedative to keep her down during transport to Garlemald.” Carmine commented, curiosity piqued further still.

“8? That’s a bit excessive, isn’t it?” Jenn, only a junior jen was not as well versed as Carmine mal Avesa.

“4 is excessive. 8 is what they use on full blooded, enhanced, Garleans. Patient kept regaining consciousness to struggle.” Carmine chirped, turning to look at unconscious Au’Ra in the medbay, impressed. “A bit fighty are we, Dainty girl? Apparently so since your heart is still beating.”

Cid felt his head spin a bit, the anxiety levels crashing down as hope surged up.

“Carmine, are you saying there is a chance of her surviving this?”

“I have no idea.” Carmine laughed. “But apparently Au’Ra’s are made of sterner stuff than I thought. Jenn, go ahead a prep a full vial of stamina potion for our little fighter. It might not help but it certainly can’t hurt!”

“A full vial?”

Dainty consuming full vials of things had been an issue thus far so Jenn wanted to check.

“Why not? She’s taken near enough on 12 doses of a sleeping potion that will knock Cid on his arse and isn’t dead yet.” Carmine replied cheerfully, giving the sleeping Au'Ra an unamused look. “Hells, we’re all out here panicking and she’s probably having the greatest nap of her life!”


	8. You Can Still Do Everything Wrong, and Win.

“Ah, good morning, little fighter. Did you have a nice sleep? No, no, don’t answer that. I know you can’t anyway.” Carmine mal Avesa teased with a grin, his brunette crowned, spectacled face swimming in front of Dainty’s momentarily as her eyes started to focus.

Carmine observed the silent Au’Ra looking around the medbay in a confused manner; “You are wanting to know why you are in the medbay; you accidentally overdosed on sleeping potions. Also, you would like to know how long you slept; 2 days!” He wagged his spectacles at her, scolding cheerfully;

“And for the love of all things Holy do not drink anymore things that Cid or Jessie give you. For a pair of geniuses, they are complete and utter _morons._ ”

Dainty looked back to focus on him.

The last thing she remembered was Jessie stroking her hair and having a cry, although she couldn’t rightly recall what she was crying about at that second. Dainty made a gesture for Carmine’s hand, wanting to communicate.

“What’s that? You’ll have to speak up, I don’t speak flailing and I can’t hear yooooou…. you know, it’s a lot more fun when the person I’m teasing can tell me to get bent.”

There was something deeply unsatisfying about trying to provoke a rise out of someone who couldn’t fire back.

Carmine mal Avesa, for all that he was a provocateur he had never been a bully.

Picking on people who couldn’t fight back wasn’t enjoyable.

Withholding the ability to communicate from someone who was incapable of “talking” by any other method was mean and being malicious was not his ilk.

The scientist popped his glasses back on and offered Dainty his palm, noting as Cid had that her gentle touch to spell out letters was ever so slightly intimate, even if she didn’t mean it to be.

A little shiver went up Carmine’s spine as she spelled out C-I-D?

It had been a long time since he had been touched quite that softly.  
Like a caress.

“Your dearest husband is likely sleeping. He did wish to remain by your side but when you lingered in extended unconsciousness I sent him to bed with instructions to at least TRY to get more than 3 hours sleep.” 

N-O-T S-L-E-E-P?

“Who, Cid? No, he has a rather chronic habit of attempting to work himself to death. I did mention that for a genius, he’s a moron, I believe. And now you’ve shown up to exhaust him further.”

Dainty frowned. This wasn't her fault.

“The thing is, little fighter, is that we do rather **need** Cid nan Garlond to be on his absolute a-game.” Carmine informed her in amused but kind tones, making it clear he was well aware that the emergencies kept happening to her, rather than being her doing or her choice. “So if you could kindly restrain yourself to one emergency a month we would all greatly appreciate it. This weekly schedule is doing all our bloody nerves in.” 

In the doorway, his gut twisted with jealousy, Cid became instantly acquainted with how much he loathed watching Dainty write on anyone elses palm.

He knew she had no choice, it was her sole method of communication but Cid couldn’t deny watching her touch Carmine provoked an ugly, dark possessiveness that he had not even known he was prone too.

Cid’s urge to stalk over and fully slap Carmine’s hand out of hers only inching higher when Dainty grinned at the scientist, spelling something else out on his manicured hand.

F-U-N-N-Y

“I am ever so glad you think so! After years and years of being trapped with me down here I rather think everyone else is well sick of my jokes.” Carmine grinned.

Carmine thought he probably ought remove his hand from Dainty’s grip but he didn’t particularly want to, looking down at the Au’Ra’s purple and orange eyes that seemed to dominate her pretty, pointed face.

 _Dainty really is the perfect name for her…. Cid got lucky…_ \- Carmine realized quickly that line of thinking was utterly inappropriate.

He tweaked his hand from her grip but moved closer to Dainty to take up a seat beside her bed to give her a full examination, reminding himself she was his patient as a Medicus and nothing more.

“Let’s see here.” Carmine hummed to himself, doing the usual precursory checks of Dainty’s pupils and the glands in her throat to ensure there were no additional reactions to the sleeping potions. His long fingers lingering on the soft skin her jawline half a second more than they strictly needed to. “Very good. How is your throat after last week? Say “ah” dear.”

Dainty couldn’t say anything, let alone “ah” but opened her mouth so that Carmine could use a stick to depress her tongue and shine a light down there to check for any fresh scarring.

“My, obedient, aren’t we?” Carmine commented, with just a whisker of a purr and a smirk. “Has anyone ever told you that your lovely little neck is in rather pristine condition for a mute who had an airship dropped on it?”

“Carmine. What are you doing?” Cid managed in strangled tones, restraining the urge to throttle the other man.

“I am flirting with your wife because I ever so enjoy it when your left eye twitches.” Carmine informed Cid imperiously, amused to see the man’s blue eyes narrowed in something that looked an awful lot like rage, even from a confessed pacifist.

Dainty scowled.

She was getting real sick of these Garleans using her, suddenly recalling what she had been crying about.

She tapped Carmine on the shoulder for his attention and, when his face swung back towards her, planted him a facer that sent him sprawling out of his chair onto the floor, knocking over several trays of supplies and his glasses off his face as he went.

“Oh, oh ho ho ho ho!!” Carmine chortled in delight from the floor as Dainty shook her hand to elevate the pain of striking him without gloves. His cheekbone had born the brunt of it. “I do believe she just told me to get bent!”

Dainty looked to Cid, palpably confused.

“Don’t bother trying to understand Carmine. Just don’t.” Cid urged, his jealousy tempered by the relief that washed over him to see her awake and well enough to be punching obnoxious mal’s who absolutely deserved it. “The only thing you need to know about Carmine is that it is his lifes goal to die surrounded by large busted Roegadyn women.”

“Elezen!” Carmine corrected from the floor. “Elezen, Cid. Their necks, oh, their graceful, glorious necks.”

“My mistake.” Cid snorted approaching Dainty slowly, not entirely sure he wasn’t about to also cop a fist to the face from the Au’Ra as Carmine had. 

He was absolutely sure he would deserve it if he did. It had taken a while to filter through the panic but Jessie’s comment about Dainty sobbing in his bed had left Cid with a deeply discomforted feeling.

His desperation was making him do awful things and he needed to stop it. For her and for his own sanity.

He held his arms out to her gently.

“May I take you back to my apartments?”

Dainty strongly considered clocking Cid right in his Garlean third eye but the knowledge that she had absolutely nowhere else to go and no one to turn to for help kept her fists at her sides. She didn’t want to find out what happened if she fought back and as much as their second coupling had left her upset and feeling used she hadn’t felt violated.

A good, over dramatic cry to wallow in her self-pity and a nice nap to get over it was all she had really needed. Dosing herself with the second potion before waiting for the first one to kick in had been stupid.

She knew better than that.

Her husband being selfish in bed really wasn’t worth almost dying over any more than puking her guts up that time she chased 3 tequila shots with 3 more tequila shots when the 1st ones didn’t kick in fast enough had been.

She gave a nod and he picked her up, fully prepared and quite happy to carry her the entire way. Dainty felt silly being carried when she could walk quite fine but it wasn’t worth the effort of struggling to get down and then trying to communicate that with her limited ability to spell out words.

Jessie caught glimpse of them walking past, sticking her head out the door to holler:

“Gods-dammit, Cid!” instantly assuming the white haired Garlean was taking Dainty back to his room for intercourse. “She’s not a wind-up sex toy!! Can you stay off her for longer than a day?!”

Cid scowled deeply.

Not sleeping with her until she requested it was what had gotten them into this mess.

He had been trying to make it optional for her, right up until it wasn’t optional for either of them.

He ignored Jessie, he couldn’t win, no matter what he did.

If he had sex with her, people yelled at him. If he didn’t have sex with her, people yelled at him.

“One of these days I’m going to fucking snap like my Father did.” Cid muttered, mostly to himself.

Between Carmine’s teasing and Jessie’s condemnation and the darker emotions such as possessiveness and jealousy that Dainty tended to provoke in him he felt like he was going to lose his mind.

All those fears of being just like the others lingered beneath the surface thoughts of his mind as Cid carried Dainty down to the lower levels, depositing her on the sofa a tad rougher than he needed to. His ire was still up from Jessie’s words before remembering sharply that he shouldn’t be taking his anger at Jessie out on Dainty.

He sat down on the floor next to sofa so that he and Dainty at the same eye level and she didn’t have to crane her neck back to look up at him. “I’m sorry, Dainty. I am so very sorry, for everything.” 

Those unreadable eyes looked back at him in silence.

Was he forgiven? Was she okay?  
He had no idea.

Cid had never realized quite how much he had relied on Jessie’s constant reassurances that he was good, and kind and honorable until they had been taken away and replaced with silence.  
Not only silence from Dainty but condemnation from Jessie, the woman who once supported him so utterly.

He couldn’t rely on Dainty for comfort when she couldn’t even speak, he had always been clear to himself on that but something had to change, Cid decided.

“I have some suggestions that I think you will find agreeable?”

She tipped her head slightly sideways, listening.

“Being around each other so much when we are essentially strangers is unnatural. I am certain we will feel much more ourselves once we have our own spaces to separate to. I will make you your own room in here, to do so would not violate the laws of the Bride Draft. There is no requirement about sharing a bed and sleeping together, only that sex occurs regularly. As for that I suggest we start having sex once a week so that the other morning never happens again. You can simply come to my room when you feel capable of it and I will endeavor to be good at it for you. That is the best I can do for now.”

Dainty nodded.  
That did seem to be a fair amendment to the status quo.

She could do sex weekly when the trade-off was having somewhere to call her own. She was starting to feel like she didn't exist as anything other than extension of Cid and it was, admittedly, unpleasant.

“Ok. I am going to shower and then I have got to get some actual work accomplished.” Cid stood. “Feel free to pick a room and decide how you would like to decorate it. I will make sure it gets done by tonight.”

He walked sharply from the room without looking back.

The Mother Crystal’s words played in Dainty’s memory;

 _You must turn aside the untrue accusations that worm their way into his heart and linger there to rot it_   
As did Carmine’s words about needing Cid to be on his A-Game.

She couldn’t say where she had heard the turn of phrase, possibly it had been Carvallain that had said tools that are stressed will shatter under pressure.

Dainty had never really considered the outside forces pulling Cid in 101 directions right now. The myriad of stressors in his life.

Her, Jessie, the lies they told the Emperor, the memories of the automatons in Eorzea and trying to react to that information on top of a demanding job that ended when the work ended, not at any set time of day leading to no small amount of sleep deprivation.

All that and he still managed to care about trying to make sex good for her, and acceptable to her.

How many other men would give up and simply bend her over the back of the couch whether she liked it not?

Most of them, Dainty would wager.

The sound of the shower turning on draw her attention and she rose to follow the noise.

She had already resigned herself to 5 years of her life in Cid’s bed if it meant so much devastation averted, or whatever the bloody Mother Crystal had said. 

If that also required her to provide a little kindness and intimacy beyond simply consenting to sex then that was far from beyond her.

It might make both their lives a little more pleasant, now that she thought of it.

Cid didn’t hear Dainty enter the bathroom above the water that cascaded over his head and shoulders. His figure visible through the steam and cloudy glass partition of the divider. He had 1 hand braced against the wall tiredly, leaning most of his weight against it and just letting the water fall on him.

Only when he was alone would Cid admit he was tired to his bones. The whole team relied on his strength to keep them going. They needed him to do better, to be better. 

He needed a good wallow in his self pity and then to pick himself up and do a hell of a lot better.

Dainty shed her clothes and slid the glass open gently and Cid groaned unhappily, assuming this to be yet another problem.

“Dainty, I swear to all Seven Hells I need you to stop choking, or dying or having emergencies for at least 1 whole day.”

If she had been capable of it she would have giggled, climbing in with him gracefully and moving behind him to catch the over spray of water without him having to relinquish the shower head.

“Looking to get the weekly civic duty out the way I see.” Cid observed, flatly, not actually bothering to move.

Dainty found a bar of soap, lathering up her hands to write “N-O” on his muscular back before rubbing her hands in circles to distribute the soap.

H-E-L-P-Y-O-U

“What?” Cid frowned, normally he didn’t have a problem with her spelling but that didn’t seem to make any sense.

H-E-L-P. Swirls of soap to make it clear this was a new word. Y-O-U

“Ah.” Cid commented as Dainty resumed rubbing, stroking his shoulders and broad back.

It was a nice thought but she didn’t understand.

His body was fine, it was his heart and mind and soul that felt like it had been battered black and blue.

Her fingers travelled over his hips, and continued down the outside of his thighs before she crouched so that she could start at his ankles and work up.

There was something oddly soothing about her actions, hands making neat kneading circles around his right leg, paying particular attention to rub hard on the calf muscle but be gentle around his knees where he might be ticklish.

He hadn’t asked her for this, there was nothing forcing her to do this.   
No law, no draft...his heart gave a queer twitch in his chest as it occurred to Cid that she…wanted... to do this. For him.

Dainty worked her way up mid-thigh before switching to his left leg and repeating the process.

He dared to peak open his blue eyes to watch her, the faintest hint of a smile tweaking at his mouth as she gathered water in her cupped hands to rinse the soap from his legs. It was almost reverent, like she was anointing his feet.

He thought to turn, feeling like her behavior was entirely too much and entirely undeserved but Dainty was the quicker, standing and pressing herself up against him so that her breasts were pressed tantalizingly against his back.

Some fresh soap for her hands and she resumed her work, lathering up the front of his thighs, hips and buttocks, even his cock but in a gentle, cleansing way, not to stimulate or arouse.

Her innocent actions utterly failed to stop Cid getting half hard in her hands before they moved over his pubic bone to his flat, tight stomach.

Dainty tried to remember the lyrics to the sea shanty Bshoi used to always sing when they washed the mast of the Kraken Arms, finding a similarity between cleaning that towering, rigid wooden structure and attending to Cid’s chiseled midsection.

Cid was rather well built.  
She had managed to entirely miss that in the chaos of the past 2 weeks.

Something about good dead men, and rum, which perhaps was not appropriate at this moment, if she even had been capable of singing anymore.

Cid finally pushed away from the wall to straighten, giving her better access to his chest but making it harder for her to reach his shoulders. Dainty was nothing if not adaptable, however, and a life at sea had given her excellent balance on slick, wet surfaces.

She climbed up on the lip that ran the entire perimeter of the shower and continued her task, washing his shoulders and neck vigorously, hands still applying hard pressure on the muscle groups but soft touches where he might be ticklish.

 _She's rather good at that_ – Cid noted as she climbed down again to wash each arm in turn, even his armpits.

He sincerely hoped that someday she'd be willing to repeat the task while he was prone and didn't have to worry about such tedious things as balance and staying upright.

Cid found himself longing to hear her voice.  
What was going on in that avid mind of hers? What on earth had prompted this?

How in the Seven Hells had she gone from sobbing in his bed to worshiping him in the shower?

What had he done to deserve this, so he could absolutely make sure to do it again?

He knew she couldn’t answer those questions and he didn’t hold it against her but certain thoughts about committing murder for the ability to read minds surfaced blearily.

Dainty diligently washed him before using her hands to guide him to spin in place so that the spray of the shower hit his back to rinse him fully.

Cid gave a little sigh, closing his eyes in the plummeting hot water. It really was pleasant to be attended to so, even if it was nothing he would ever have imagined himself liking

Apparently finished with her task Dainty's hands moved off his body and it took several languid moments for Cid to open his eyes again, discovering that Dainty had again climbed the sides, bracing herself in place with her feet so that her collar bones and breasts were right at eye level.

Despite their nudity her touches weren't sexual as she cupped his face, guiding his head back into the stream of water enough to wet his hair. 

_Oh yes, she has not washed that yet._ \- Cid recalled, a large amount of happy that this event was not yet over.

It was so blessedly, beautifully intimate. Her hands stroking shampoo through his white locks, taking such exacting care to make sure none ran into his eyes, even his Garlean third eye.

Rinse and conditioning following with the same silent devotion. She even spent a few rather pleasurable moments conditioning his beard and Cid would have desperately loved to know how she knew to do that, precisely. 

She caught water in her cupped hands again to rinse his beard, focused on her task and eyes unreadable despite Cid desperately trying to catch her eye.

He managed it once but got nothing more than a little half smile from Dainty before she used her thumbs to guide him to close his eyes again.

A final rinse of his hair and just a few moments rubbing her fingers down the bridge of his nose and across his cheek bones and she was done, jumping down lightly from her perch to climb casually out of the shower as if what had just occurred was a normal, everyday thing.

Dainty wrapped a towel around herself and wandered out of the bathroom as silently as she had wandered in.

Utterly awestruck Cid lacked the ability to call her back.

She'd rendered him completely speechless.


	9. All Work No Sleep Makes Cid a Grumpy Garlean

It was late by the time Cid returned to his apartment. 

Thanks to Dainty's shower interlude he had gotten a late start on the day and Jessie had given him Hell about it. Cid had worked until after midnight to make up for it.

Dainty was happily ensconced in her own bed in her own room, a small collection of books around her and the bedside light still on. Cid had sent a couple of the lowest ranking members of the facility to help her carve out a little space for herself, which she had done quite happily.

Cid gave a small smile at the sleeping Au'Ra and moved to his own room.

 _Good_ – He thought, undressing and preparing for bed. - _This is how it always should have been. She has her space and is happy. I have my space. We'll just... coexist. Once a week she can come to my room... on her schedule...we'll get our duty done and that will be that. No more emergencies. No more interrupting my work. No more anyone accusing her of being my wind-up sex toy._

Cid climbed under the blankets, relishing having the space all to himself again. 

_No more sharing my pillows. No more spiked tail poking me in the bleeding shins._ He put out the lights, rolling into a comfortable position. _Just 5 years. We'll get through it so much easier now._

It was near on 3am by the time Cid gave up, rolling over angrily to stare at the ceiling and admitting he utterly hated this new arrangement.

It was all Dainty's fault.

Crawling into the shower with him and being so attentive had gone and given him bloody feelings.

_What was she bleeding playing at with that?_

He had no ability to guess at her motivations because he had no idea what her personality was like. Her inability to communicate vocally made her an enigma to him. With the exception of a few, tiny things she had demonstrated he knew more about her from her personnel file than he did from living with her for 2 weeks.

_What if she chokes again? What if she's hurt and I don't know it?_

Her absence was making him want to wrap her up in his arms, to take her far away, where none knew their names, so that the only person she could touch, or speak to or saw was him. 

_That isn't concern, that is isolation and obsession and dammit where is this coming from?!_

The grin she'd shown Carmine lingered in his mind, provoking a fresh curl of jealousy because she didn't smile at him like that.

_I need to sleep. I'm going to start making stupid mistakes if I don't get a good night sleep...Hells... Its near 3..._

He rolled out of bed, abandoning in favor of moving down the hall to Dainty's room. She hadn't requested a lock, which was good because he would have refused to give it to her and he didn't want to have to.

His footsteps at the threshold to her room woke her, sitting up on a hip groggily.

"Dainty?" Cid asked softly, seeing the small figure in the bed had been roused by his creeping into her room.

Dainty's expression was hazy with sleep. She had been fully asleep and didn't appreciate being woken but could make an educated guess that Cid just wanted to sleep in her room with her. That certainly wasn't worth fully waking up for.

"I couldn't sleep. I think I got too used to your weight in bed." Cid admitted with a small, self-deprecating laugh. "Can I lay next to you? I won't bother you, I promise. I just **need** to sleep and can’t. I even brought my own pillow." 

The throb of desperation in his voice killed the protest that Dainty had thought to give him, instead making an uncoordinated effort at moving the blankets aside and dislodging some books so that he could climb into the bed beside her as she resumed her position, curled on her side, one arm shoved under her pillow to most comfortably brace her cranial projections and neck.

“Thank you. Can I hold you?"

Dainty gave what he assumed what an annoyed huff of air.

_So much for not bothering her, Garlond._

But she seemed willing to forgive. She turned in place, gave her pillow a fluff and flopped down into his embrace. He wrapped her up desperately as she squirmed closer to him, kicking one leg over his to relax there.

Cid kissed the scales at her forehead tenderly, lips brushing against her skin to ask;

"Can an Eorzean like you ever fall in love with a Garlean like me, Dainty?”

Her expression was unhappy, roused enough to write T-I-R-E-D on his arm where she could reach.

"Sorry, sorry." Cid soothed, angling his head just a little to kiss her mouth.

She did attempt to return the kiss but was mostly drifting off into an exhausted sleep.

Cid scolded himself again for his bad-behavior, taking liberties while she was too sleepy to protest was wrong but he didn't let her go, either.

 

Cid was still fast asleep when Dainty woke, still curled around her but not holding her so tightly that she couldn't gently extract herself from his embrace.

Given how tried he sounded last night Dainty felt letting him sleep was probably wise. She eased herself out of bed and gently placed the spare blanket over him to compensate for her withdrawn body heat.

Cid didn't stir, proving just how much he needed a solid nights sleep. 

She threw on one of her robes and went in search of a bit of breakfast, thinking she could lure him awake with food. 

It took her about an hour and fully shaking the Garlean to realize he wasn't going to wake up.

 _Well.... shit..._ \- Dainty realized, watching Cid sleep. She was locked in, the code at the door only recognized Cid's palm, and Jessie's and her status as a Drafted Bride meant that she could not use tablets the others all used to communicate.

Easier to keep the Brides contained if all communication with the outside world was cut off, putting them entirely at the mercy of their husbands.

Using Cid's keycard didn't work, presumable the system somehow knew it wasn't him wielding it.

Dainty gave the door that barred her from the rest of the laboratory a long, loathing look before back tracking to the kitchen. 

A bucket of water thrown onto the console helpfully short circuited it allowing her to pry the door open and wedge a toaster in it to keep it that way.

 _Never try and chain a Pirate_ – Dainty smirked going in search of Carmine and Jenn, the Medicus recognizing instantly that something was a-miss to see Dainty sprinting into the room with no Cid following closely behind.

“Well this is new! Normally when you come rushing in here you're being carried, Dainty girl! And where on earth is your large, grumpy shadow? Have you finally murdered him so that we can run away together, my slender necked love?” Carmine asked and earned a grin from Dainty despite the situation.

A nice shiny bruise on his cheek from her having punched him showed up in purples under the bright medbay lights. 

Dainty pantomimed sleeping, rolling over and sleeping more, trying to shake something, and sleeping some more.

“Now, now, I am certain I told you to restrain yourself to 1 emergency a week.” Carmine scolded, then relented at the panic that flashed in Dainty's eyes “Cid will be fine. When his clones revert to goo and the memories come to him it is during sleep. He is merely getting a particularly large update of the goings on in Eorzea. Also, this somewhat happens from time to time when he attempts to work himself into an early bloody grave.” 

Dainty looked skeptical. Cid had mentioned something about this but Carmine would say and do almost anything for a reaction, she was not sure she could trust him.

“Go back to bed, and don't let him leave it for the rest of the day.” Carmine gave her an over exaggerated leer. “I trust you have a variety of weapons in your arsenal for that endeavor.”

“I've sent Cid a message to rest, doctors orders, for at least 24 hours. He should get it when he wakes up.” Jenn added helpfully. 

Carmine considered this, looked Dainty up and down and added;

“Amend that to 48. The wind-up sex toy appears to be in a mood and might need a solid tending to.”

Which was how Carmine acquired a matching bruise on his other cheek care of Dainty's fist, cackling with laughter as Dainty stalked from the room.

Jenn watched her go curiously, before turning to his Superior, still chuckling to himself of the floor with speculative eyes;

“How do you suppose she got out?”

“That little fighter? She probably punched the door in.”


	10. Its All Carmine's Fault

Cid awoke well after lunch time with a sick uneasy feeling. 

The memories from the automaton had been troubling, someone had let Nero tol Scaeva out to play in Eorzea, but there was nothing he could do about the memories from Garlemald save program the necessary information into the next Cid automaton and send it on its way to assist the Scions of the Seventh Dawn.

Dainty's room did not have a Fool's portal, and she had lit it with only candles while he slept, making it hard to judge the time.

“Dainty?” Cid called, glancing around for her. Her head popped up from the small sofa she had in the far corner, flanked by two fake elephant ear plants. 

She rose, and walked quickly to him, reaching for his hand to communicate.

“What time is it?”

3 – P-M

“Oh fuck. That's going to put us so far behind.” Cid fretted. He knew he had needed that sleep but with this additional information that Gaius van Baelsar was rebuilding an ancient Allagans weapon they would need to step up production.

If Gaius was successful it was only a matter of time before Solus desired to use that weapon to conquer and would press Cid harder for the promised clone soldiers for the ranks. 

S-L-E-E-P

“That’s a lovely thought but I have too much to do.” Cid insisted, starting to rise. Dainty grabbed his tablet, shoving it into his hands and pointing insistently at Jenn’s message to rest. “48 hours? Yeah right!”

Dainty gave Cid a long, dire look considering her next course of action before dropping her shoulder and fully tackling him to the bed.

“Dainty! Stop that!” Cid protested as she quickly made it very clear she would physically restrain him if she had to.

Unfortunately for Dainty she had reckoned not with the fact that, although Cid was an Engineer, Garleans were required to perform military service well into their teenaged years.

Not only that but they had to stay current with their training in case of invasion.

Cid’s hammer functioned as his primary weapon although he hardly touched it anymore and his hand-to-hand combat abilities at least came close enough to hers that his size and height different could make up for the rest.

It didn’t take long for him to overpower her, or her to start fighting dirty, latching her teeth into his shoulder and, when he flinched back in pain using the momentum to burst out from underneath him to try and pin him.

“Ow! Shit! Dammit, what the Hells?!” He only narrowly managed to avoid her catching his arm to twist it behind his back by fully bucking her off and grabbing her around the waist as she fell. 

Then ducked the elbow she threw and managed to clumsily tackle her back to the bed, this time shoving an arm across her throat. She clawed his sides violently, necessitating the gripping of both her wrists in one of his larger hands and resting his full weight on her.

Cid pinned her hands above her head, panting at the exertion and trying to figure out what had gotten into her.

A glance at Dainty’s face found her grinning, eyes lidded and hazy, pleased at having successfully distracted him from returning to work and having discovered she was apparently into this.

She had sassed Hydealyn about Cid being into chaining her up but she was stunningly hyper aware of his weight crushing her to the bed and his hands on her wrists. 

And aware of how badly she wanted his mouth on her body again.

Dainty had not known that about herself but there was no point denying that she was aroused. It was painted clearly in her smirk and the blush on her pale cheeks.

“Are you going to stop?” Cid demanded.

She shook her head no. She was quite happy right where she was, she only needed how to figure out how to communicate her desire that he remove their clothes and fuck her with her hands restrained.

“Please?”

He felt her shift and tensed, preparing for renewed attack but instead she hitched her legs over his hips and arched her body against his, as best she could anyway.

A strange mix of alarm, confusion and joy widened Cid’s eyes as he realized her expression was that of lust.

His mouth claimed hers instantly, all thought of leaving that bed utterly forgotten, releasing her wrists to gather her up in his arms tenderly.

She responded deliciously, wrapping her arms around his neck and grinding against him.

Heated, heady kisses were exchanged as his hands roamed her body again, slipping off her robe before they caressed her inner thighs. 

Cid smiled against Dainty’s lips, teasing her mouth with fleeting kisses as he teased her cunt with fleeting touches. Each time his fingers would dance close to where she wanted to be touched most she’d strain against him, as if she could force herself closer to his hand.

All in a rush he gave her what she ached for, pressing the heel of his hand against her clit and driving two fingers inside her. 

Dainty rocked herself against the heel of his hand, fingers tormenting her folds and stroking her core expertly.  
Her silent breaths had the faintest tremble to them.

Cid removed his hand from her, earning himself a slightly cross-eyed glare from Dainty, who had been enjoying that. 

He gave her a quick kiss before working his way down her body with his mouth moving closer and closer to his goal before, all at once his tongue slipped inside her and her head tipped back into the pillows.

Her entire body twitched.

He returned his attention to her clit, finding that sweet spot and lingering there intimately. She shivered against the bedding, clutching the sheets and struggling to breathe. 

If he just kept doing that a little longer… every muscle tensed, instinctively trying to close her thighs but utterly unable thanks to the man between when …. She was right there.

“a..ah ah!” 

Her peak hit her, loosing a tiny, broken moan from her as she arched so hard only her head and hips actually remained in contact with the bed.

It was hard to say who was more startled by this.

Cid, who froze or Dainty, who almost catapulted herself off the bed in shock. Her orgasmic high utterly ruined in sheer shock of hearing her own for voice for the first time in near on 10 years.

Their eyes locked.

 _Could it…. was it an act? She was a Monk… don’t they take vows of silence?_ \- Cid questioned, a million thoughts cascading through his mind.

If her silence had been an act it was simultaneously the most infuriating and convincing act that Cid had ever witnessed. He wasn’t sure how he would feel if she had been able to speak this entire time before remembering he had seen her genuinely attempt to cry out multiple times. 

He had also seen the scar tissue that had dislodged itself from her throat, Carmine had named it Stella and kept it in formaldehyde in his office, after all.

Cid moved to sit next to her gently, she was pulling the sheets to cover her nakedness, her eyes scared and confused. Hearing her own voice again was clearly provoking some intense insecurity in the Au’Ra.

Cid couldn’t even begin to guess at why, to him this seemed to be cause for extreme celebration, but he had never been forced into a decade of silence by someone elses doing either.

“Dainty,” he coaxed in what he hoped was a beguiling tone. “Will you please try to speak?”

Confusion crossed her delicate features and for several long seconds she stared at him before finally managing a faint, breathy whisper.

“What... did... Carmyne... do t’me?” Her voice was weak, and faint and she had long forgotten how to properly breathe in between her sentences, instead doing it in between her words.

Her naming of the neck obsessed medicus as the source of this did seem to be the logical choice as the cause of this.

“I think Carmine had accidentally healed your voice, Dainty and I am about ready to climb out of this bed and kiss the man for it.” Cid marveled.

“Acc-ident-ally?” 

“Correct me if I am wrong but, when you were injured you would have been treated with field magic, likely by a hurried conjurer trying to heal as many as possible as quickly as possible.” Cid theorized and Dainty nodded. She had also been fed whatever rations were on hand, often thick, heavy stews and overcooked burn ends of meat that had been painful to consume on her damaged throat.

She had had a voice after the accident, not much of one but a little but each passing day it had grown weaker and weaker until it had ceased altogether.

“The wound in your throat that had originally stolen your voice was recently reopened but this time it was treated with the absolute best of Garlean medicines.” Cid pointed out.

Dainty felt her jaw drop.

She had been fed only soft foods until the wound was healed again too, allowing her vocal chords to heal without being reinjured over and over until scar tissue so thick she could not speak was formed.

“Th’Twelve be praised. No… sod th’Twelve. Carmyne… be bloody praised.” Dainty added, warming up to having her voice again and regaining strength with it.

“Seven hells, you have an accent.” Cid realized with a huge grin.

Dainty clapped her hands over her mouth and fully blushed, suddenly divining just how uneducated she was going to sound next to the clipped, refined tones the Garleans used.

She was certain she sounded exactly like the Lominsan pirate she was.

“No, no, don’t be embarrassed. It’s beautiful. Say my name?”

“Cid.”

“All of it.”

“Cid nan Garlond.”

The way she drew out the vowels in his name was exquisite and drew a growl from him. He had never heard his name pronounced quite like that and was possessed by a desire to see if he could make her scream it.

“I have so many questions to ask you.” Cid admitted with a small laugh, realizing that she could finally answer them.

Dainty tipped her head to the side, signifying confusion.

“Please speak for me, Dainty.” Cid begged. “You have no idea how many nights I’ve spent longing to know what you want, or what you were thinking. If you were just nodding because you had to, or because you wanted to. I didn’t want to say anything, you couldn’t control being a mute but please, if you can talk, I need to you to talk to me whenever possible.”

His plaintive tone tweaked at her heart as it had last night when he asked to sleep in her bed. Despite having fully retreated to the other side of it in her shock Dainty crawled towards Cid now.

“I want t’be kissed.” She informed him. “We were doin’ so well. We ought continue. My voice will still be here when we're done.”

“Do you actually want to, or just because of the weekly duty?” He could not express how glad he was to actually be able to ask that and get a verbal reply.

“I want to b’coz you sodding well owe me one. Next time you put me across yer lap could you at least tell me I’m a good girl when yer done with me?” Dainty demanded. “Also! You keep kissing me too quickly and then stopping when it gets good. So quit that.”

Having a voice again was marvelous.

Cid gave a burst of relieved laughter.

He had been so upset at having been forced into that situation and she was mostly just upset that he hadn't kissed her goodbye.

“Is this the personality you’ve been hiding behind those unreadable eyes of yours?” 

His heartbeat quickening in anticipation of getting to know this Dainty.

“Aye, you mightn’t half like me better without me voice.” Dainty smirked. 

“Never!” Cid promised, more or less tackling her to the bed and attacking her with his affections. She had responded so eagerly to being pinned down earlier, after all and history repeated itself.

She arched her body into his almost at once and Cid discovered if he would just wait half a second before kissing her she would tip her head back, holding her mouth up for his kisses in an incredibly flattering way.

Warm lips caressed over hers, lifting off slightly, as if he were about to move for her neck and then capturing her mouth again. 

Cid was nothing if a fast learner, she said she preferred to be smooched a bit longer, so smooching was what she got.

His large hands slipped over her body, pulling her closer to him. The scent of him suffocated her in the best way possible. 

Cid had said something, after that first night, about going to a meeting covered in the scent of her and Dainty hadn't ever really put much thought into that, much like it had never really occurred to her that Cid was well built.

Her mind was too overwhelmed and too much of a mess by everything else going on but now that they were there again it occurred to her that he did smell really good. Like soap, and conditioner and skin and.... masculine.

It made her want to bite his shoulders.

Dainty felt herself falling back into arousal slowly, running her hands down his back and feeling all the muscles there, digging her fingernails in slightly so that he broke the kiss with a slight hiss.

Cid shot her a playfully scolding expression, those blue eyes heated with desire and Dainty felt herself blush under the weight of his gaze, not knowing it was only to tease.

“Sorry, I'll be gentler.” she offered meekly.

“No, no. I was pleased you were participating.” Cid corrected. “I want this to be something we do together, not something I’m doing to you.”

“Oh!” Her eyes lit up. That notion apparently hadn't occurred to the Au'Ra. “In that case, can you get off me? My tail is getting’ a little sore.”

Cid admitted to being a little hurt at being told to get off her but did as asked and quickly discovered she hadn't actually wanted to stop, just reverse positions. 

When he moved his weight off her she very quickly threw a leg over his hips and slid to straddle him.

Dainty gave a happy sigh and arched her hips and spine to get that annoying kink she had developed out of them, tipping her head back and thrusting out her breasts as she did. Treating Cid to a candle lit vision of her exquisitely naked form. 

His hands caressed up her sides and massaged her breasts, thumbs flicking ever so lightly over her nipples, the action getting a little strong on each flick until they were aroused, and pebbled.

“Mmmm” she squirmed a little, grinding against him without even meaning to. Her body moving against his as she adjusted for height to reach his mouth before leaning in for a long kiss that stole their breaths.

She rested her forehead on his a moment, his hands dancing up her spine and down again, prompting more squirms and almost a full shudder.

A little frown pulled in her eyebrows ever so slightly before she offered in a soft voice; “I should be doing something f'r you.”

“Oh trust me, you are.” Cid chuckled, grabbing her hips, giving her a solid yank backwards and firmly acquainting her with the rigid shaft of flesh in his pajama pants. He had been getting hard since she raked her fingers down his back and started actively participating.

“Ooooo.” Dainty gave a little wiggle, adapting quickly to this new sensation. The heated flesh pressing up against her equally heated core. “Would you like a blowjob, or should I just ride you?”

Cid stared at her, a vein in the side of his neck popping out slightly in shock;

“Wow.”

“What?” Dainty demanded, defensive.

“No, no. Not a bad wow.” Cid reassured her. “Just ...wow, how did that directness come out of a woman who has been silently submissive all this time?”

“I told you you'd probably like me better without my voice.”

“I never said that. You just seem to have transformed into a different person entirely and, forgive me, that is a malm startling.”

Dainty folded her arms across her breasts, still feeling unfairly picked upon. 

“It’s not my bloody fault I had nothing to write with and you don't know Eorzean letters. You'd have figured out I'm a sassy pirate real bloody quick if we weren't communicating in High Garlean.” Dainty snapped, lifting herself off him and wrapping herself up in a blanket, insecure again.

She had always wondered what would happen if, by some miracle, her voice returned. If she were able to express all the thoughts that seemed to careen haphazardly through her mind. 

People tended to take a liking to her quickly and she had always wondered how much of that was because she was actually likable and how much was because she could not speak. 

Did people truly realize who she was, or did her mutism allow them to subscribe to her their own beliefs towards the motivations of her actions, painting her as what they wanted her to be, rather than what she was?

She flopped down on her side, back to him and well content to ignore him in silence for a while.

“You're right.” Cid soothed, rolling towards her and resting a hand on her back and when she didn't immediately shake it off rubbing a gentle circle.

As before he had no idea where this intense insecurity was coming from but he could at least try to be comforting. She was right, they had been doing so well. He would have very much liked to continue doing so well. “None of that was your fault. The fact I don't know you is entirely my own doing. When I haven't been working I have been talking at you, rather than to you.”

That seemed to placate her, rolling over a little to glance at him over a bare shoulder. 

“When you're a mute people tend t'put their own words into yer mouth, and like you or loath you on who they think you are. S'not like you can tell 'em otherwise. Then when you do somethin’ that doesn't match up t'what they think you should do, they get mad.”

Cid thought about that, and her behavior in the past for several long minutes before gently putting his lips to her bare shoulder.

“I have been guilty of putting my own words in your mouth.” he said softly. “I keep subscribing your actions to being submissive but now I don't think that is a word you would ever use for yourself.”

Dainty shook her head “no.” clearly developing a habit of lapsing back into silence when emotional.

“I asked you to go along with consummating the Bride Draft, when you dropped your robe I called it compliance but should have called it boldness. You couldn't have been more direct if you had tried! There was nothing submissive about the way you were joking with Carmine, or the way you punched him.” Cid gave a small laugh. “Nor climbing into the shower with me.”

Dainty shuffled around a little more, trying to look at him better and not have to fully lay on her tail. Cid realized quickly and moved to the other side of her, laying on his side so that they could converse comfortably.

Dainty realized Carmine was right, they did need a full 48 hours together, without Cid's work in the way although the Scientist could not of predicted her voice returning. 

Or perhaps he did.

He was an expert in necks, after all.

“When ye first told me who you were, I thought t'make you put me in chains. I swore I wouldn't be taken willingly by someone workin' against Eorzea. But you weren't and when y'told me that, I had no intentions of fightin' ” Dainty explained.

“That was one of the many, many questions I had been wanting to ask.” Cid admitted, raising a hand and brushing his fingertips down her arm, enjoying the texture of his fingers moving from skin to scales and back again.

Goosebumps raised on her skin, he noted instantly. She was ever so faintly ticklish on her scales.

He hadn't avoided them thus far necessarily, just didn't pay them any special attention, not knowing what to do with them.

“The only time I could ever say I was “submissive” was one time you picked me up without asking and it was easier t'just go with it that than struggle t'get down. Even th'other mornin', if there had been more time I'd have started playin' along. I admit, I felt used n'I had a cry about it but a thank you or a good girl before you left woulda set me right.”

“That relieves my heart in ways I cannot possible express.” Cid told her, risking leaning in for a kiss, although stopping just before making contact with her lips and letting her close the distance. She did, but it was only a very quick, fleeting kiss. “The fact you arrived injured, having fought so hard against being Drafted confused me. I could not reconcile that someone who almost took out 4 guards with her bare hands would simply drop her robe for me unless she was...submitting... to me, as it were.”

“But I didn't fight against bein' drafted. I didn't even realize I had been till after I took an arrow t'my shoulder and went down.”

“But...”

“I was fightin' so that Marisolle wouldn't be drafted.” Dainty explained, recounting the incident and the corrupt official who had named the pretty midlander as 16 despite Marisolle being only 12.

By the time she was done Cid was looking at her with clear admiration in his eyes, his featherlight touches at her arm sweeping up to smooth some pale mint coloured hair from her eyes, tucking it gently behind the cranial projection on that side.

“I am so lucky that you didn't automatically hate me upon meeting me, after everything that Garleans have put you through. Carmine mentioned your file noted you kept waking up to struggle during transport but, knowing you the little that I do, you were likely just trying to grab someone’s hand to communicate.”

“I was so drugged I couldn’t honestly tell you what I was doin’ but tryin’ t’ask where I was being taken seems likely.” Dainty admitted. “And what would be the point of hating you. You didn’t choose this anymore than I did. I am reasonably certain a wife with scales was a bit of a bleedin’ surprise. I didn’t even know Auri could be genetic matches to Garleans!”

Cid chuckled her, his eyes slightly lidding as he considered making another attempt at continuing. They may as well, she was naked and he was still hard and they were in bed together, after all.

“I think your scales are beautiful and, I’m curious to discover, slightly ticklish. Shall I show you how much I like them?”

The grin she gave him in response to his light flirting made his heart utterly sing.

“Aye.” Dainty smirked. “Do that, then.”


	11. Happy Snuggles.

Cid maneuvered himself closer to the blanket wrapped Au’Ra, coaxing the sheets from around her naked form and, when she allowed that, settled in beside her to share her pillow so that they could be face to face without her tail being squished.

He leaned in for a kiss, paused a fraction of a second to see her smile, then claimed her mouth confidently.

Gentle kisses at first, then growing bolder as Dainty responded eagerly, raising her arms to slid them around his neck.

His skin was smooth under her palms, and warm. His pulse dancing beneath her fingertips for just a moment as they lingered on his neck before she wrapped them around his body.

She liked kissing, and Cid was ridiculously good at it. Especially now that he didn’t stop too soon for her liking.

She was even getting to like the sensation of kissing someone with a beard.

She pulled herself closer and hitched a leg over his hip.

Cid couldn’t help but grin a little, gripping her leg at the thigh and pressing himself against her tightly, enjoying the warmth of her skin and the stimulation against his hard length. Her position gave Cid easy access to drag his fingertips across her ribs, and the scale clusters at her hips.

Tickling and teasing and kissing her all the while.

Dainty gave a little tremble. He was making her weak at the knees and light headed and her pulse jump all the same time. It was a powerfully arousing sensation and he hadn’t even touched her anywhere particularly sexual yet.

Cid broke the kiss gently, pressing kisses to her soft jaw line and moving closer to her to press kisses to her neck.

Dainty have a murmur of encouragement and he smiled against her skin, glad to have gotten the timing right for her this time.

His hard length pressing up against her leg caught Dainty’s attention. She’d managed to touch him a little, that first time but had been entirely too overwhelmed to actually explore, or play and time had not been on their side.

This time, however…

“I want…..” Dainty murmured, giving a little squirm against his touches.

Cid raised his head to look at her, a blush on her cheeks and her eyes dancing with trepidation.

“What?” He coaxed beguilingly. “Talk for me, Dainty.”

“I want t’touch you back.”

His earlier reaction to her boldness had left her shy, and over sensitive about his potentially disliking the personality she was now capable of fully displaying after his mistakingly casting her as submissive.

“I should like that very much.” Cid assured her. 

He was frankly pleased she wanted to. As he had said before, he wanted sex to be something they did together, not something he did to her.

Cid instantly let her go, rolling into his back and putting his hands behind his head, relaxed and happy to let her experiment and investigate his body. Making it very clear that she was free to do as she pleased. 

Hells, she could call the whole thing off in one word if she was so inclined in his opinion.

Not that he desired that, just that if she did he would obey without question.

Dainty grinned and sat up beside him, reaching for the ties of his pajama pants. She was naked, she really thought it only fair he ought be naked too.

Cid couldn’t help but bite back a chuckle at the look of utter determination on her face as she undressed him, running her hands up his legs, getting bolder and bolder with her touches until one delicate, scaled hand curled around his length gently.

He didn’t bother trying to bite back the soft grunt of pleasure. Or the several that following it as she stroked him, avidly investigating the blood engorged organ.

Touching turned into licking, licking turned into sucking which turned into both of Cid’s hands in Dainty’s hair as she bobbed on him, swirling her tongue around and around.

Dainty decided she liked the weight of Cid’s hands on her. They kept reflexively tightening and giving her hair a slight tug when she did something particularly pleasurable she really liked that.

She thought, in the future, she might quite like it if he fully pulled her hair and made her do these things to him, as opposed to just accepting what she felt like giving.

But that was a conversation for a different day and besides, she had her mouth full right now.

“Seven Hells, Dainty.” Cid growled, eyes clenched closed and clamping down on the urge to buck his hips in response to her playing. “Nnnf... you are better at that than you should be.”

Dainty lifted her mouth off him with a giggle and a breath.

“And here I thought being able to hold my breath for 10 minutes was only good for pearl hunting.” When he looked at her in surprise she grinned and reminded him. “Pirate.”

Being able to hold her breath didn’t compensate for the fact that her jaw was starting to tire, or the fact that she just really wanted him inside her.

Her thoughts of his being demanding with her by request was a little more stimulating than anticipated.

The strangest calm washed over Cid as Dainty moved to straddle him again. Weeks of anxiety draining away from him as her full lips pulled up at the corners.

The heat from her core and the moisture from her mouth mingled together, teasing him as her slick pussy rubbed his hard length, provoking a soft groan from Cid.

She raised her self, but hesitated.  
She only sort of knew what she was doing, if she was honest.

“Guide me?” Dainty requested gently, her soft voice belied by the intense blush on her cheeks. 

Cid obeyed at once, one hand guiding his length to her entrance, the other firmly pinching her waist to coaxed her into sitting onto him.

The tip of his cock slipped easily into her tight pussy. 

Both hands cupped her scaled hips gently, guiding, as requested but absolutely letting her control the tortuously slow speed at which she lowered herself.

His body ached with the restrained urge to pull her down quickly, the pleasure vibrating and pulsating over every inch of him as he slid deeper and deeper in. His balls tightened. 

“Ah ha..” Dainty gave a little convulsive breath feeling just as Cid did once their bodies were fully joined.

She felt incredible, rocking herself just a little, getting acclimatized to being full of him from that angle

“Oh!”

That was quite good, she realized, swaying slightly as she rode him. 

Dainty's hips shifted back involuntarily, her body moving forwards as she moved a little faster still.

Cid could barely move, utterly in enthralled by the look on her face. Curious, and pleasured at the same time, soft gasps spilling from between her lips on each breath.

Knowing that she wanted to be there, that she was actively choosing to be with him, made it all the sweeter to Cid.

His hands caressed up her sides and massaged hers breasts. The effect of his thumbs circling over her erect nipples with devastating precision made Dainty moan and shudder, losing her rhythm to arch her breasts into his hands. 

Cid gave growl. She was so delightfully eager and her enthusiasm swelled his cock even harder insider her, drawing a hum of surprise from Dainty and provoking her to grind against him.

Cid sat up to draw her into a long kiss, Dainty rolled her hips as their tongues met.

“Grab the headboard.” Cid directed as she gave a breathy sigh into his mouth.

She paused, looking at him in confusion, head tipped slightly to the side, then did as asked. 

His mouth dragged down the pale column of her neck, teasing breaths intertwined with hard nips of his teeth over her delicate skin. 

“Oh?!”

That hurt... but...didn't. That too intense tickle feeling crawled up her spine as Cid's hands swept down her back and found her hips. She seemed to have lost her way but he did not mind guiding her again.

Coaxing her into raising herself slightly, following the command of his large hands bracketing her body, then pulling her down sharply as he thrust up.

“aahaa!” Dainty felt her mouth drop open as his fingertips dug into her hips, encouraging her to bounce faster and faster.

Pleasure shot through Cid's body, capturing her kiss swollen lips and drinking in every carnal gasp she made.

The urge to bite his shoulders hit her again and she wrenched her mouth away from Cid's to do just that, latching her teeth into his shoulder, then soothing the sting with her tongue in what she hoped was a close approximation to what he had done her moments ago.

Cid gave a sharp grunt, half pleasure, half pain, pulling her down onto his cock harder. 

Dainty shook, tucking her chin against his shoulder, giving up on remembering to move herself. He didn't seem to mind, holding her hips still as he thrust up into her, pushing open and sending heat and lightening down every limb.

She couldn’t breath again. Every stroke of his cock inside her sent shocks of pleasure throughout her body. 

Climax hit Dainty hard, hips rolling and fingers gripping the headboard so hard her knuckles went white as she convulsed all around his length.

Feeling her release pushed him closer, a few more hard thrusts and Cid was there too, cumming in an explosion of shivers and stars spinning behind his eyelids. 

It took him several long minutes they stayed there, locked together, her inner muscles working on him and his cock twitching as it emptied itself inside her, lust addled bodies instinctively searching for every last drop of pleasure. 

It took Cid equally as long to catch his breath, looking at the Au’Ra straddling him and finally releasing his grip on her hips wrap his arms around her body.

Dainty gave a whimpering little shudder, every nerve ending in her body over sensitive, still pressing her face into his shoulder. Cid turned his head enough to press a kiss to the cranial projection on that side before burying his face into her hair.

“Good girl.” He murmured and Dainty giggled against his skin.

He had to admit to being slightly dizzy, pulling her with him as he collapsed back to the bed so that they ended up in a snuggling tangled mess of limbs and her tail.

Cid yawned a little, smothering it as best he could. 

It wasn't late, only just dinner time but the past few hours had been a little bit of a roller coaster of actions and emotions and he was certainly feeling it.

He was also feeling rather like he could use some dinner, having slept through breakfast and lunch.

“We should go and tell Carmine the good news.” Cid mused, although he made no effort to actually release her.

“Yah should have summore sleep.” Dainty replied, having heard that yawn even if she couldn't see it thanks to the way she was pressed up against his front, her head tucked under his chin. 

He gave a little groan, wrapping her up tighter and pressing several kisses to her head, confusing the Au'Ra as to what she had said to provoke that. “Whut?”

“Your accent.” Cid chuckled, “Does it always get stronger after sex?”

“How th'S'ven Hells should I bleedin' know!?” Dainty exclaimed, self conscious about it and thinking him laughter at her. Considering this was the first time she'd ever had sex with her voice restored to her and only the 3rd time she had ever had sex period she absolutely could not say.

“I hope it does.” Cid told her, drawing back to look her in the eye. “I love it, Dainty. The way words drip off your lips is stunning.”

She looked skeptical but not willing to make a fuss over it. She thought she sounded like a prized idiot beside his neat, perfect pronunciation of words. 

“Go t'sleep.”

“No, no, I can never nap. And I'm hungry besides. I will sleep plenty tonight.”

“Try fer a bit while we snuggle, at least?”

“What do I get if I do?” Cid teased, voice very deep and feeling very, very satisfied.

“Whatdya want?” Dainty asked. 

She didn’t have a lot to give other than herself which he had just helped himself to quite successfully.

Cid hesitated. 

He knew what he wanted but wasn’t sure if asking for it, rather than waiting for it to be given would cheapen it.

It had been such a glorious experience the first time.

“Will you wash me again in the shower?” Cid asked softly, utterly unable to resist.

“Oh, certainly.” Dainty was happy to do that. “Would yah like t'do that now? It might calm yah enough to nap. And would yah not prefer it performed in the bath where yah can fully relax?” 

Cid gave a little groan of delight, dinner utterly forgotten and curling her up even tighter and snuffling kisses into her hair and onto the top of her head.

“Yes. That.”

 

It wasn't until the next morning that they bothered to venture out of Cid's private apartments. 

Food had been delivered care of Carmine, along several messages from the Medicus reminding Cid to take frequent rehydration breaks in between tending to the wind-up sex toy.

Cid had deleted those before Dainty could see them but made sure to otherwise follow their instructions.

He did need to take better care of himself, after all. 

Doctors orders.

A doctor who was going to be very amused to discover Dainty's voice had returned as they walked to Carmine's medlab, hand in hand.

Several people watched their progress through the Hulk with amusement, and a large sense of relief to see Cid relaxed, and happy as opposed to looking pinched, and stressed.

As Carmine had observed to Dainty, they did need Cid to be on his toes. He was the one that had to look into the face of the Emperor of the Imperial Empire and lie to him on a regular basis.

He was the one they all followed. Without his genius, without his vision, everything would have fallen to pieces long ago. It was the weight of his name, and his skills that kept them all safe.

“Carmine, I need you to look at Dainty’s throat something odd as happened.” Cid requested, scooping Dainty up as he entered the medlab to set her down on a bed. 

Carmine looked up from the tablet he had been reading on and gave Cid a playfully heated look.

“I knew you loved me.”

“Don’t be bloody pervy about it.” Cid scolded and Carmine laughed;

“Couldn’t if I tried, Cid. Couldn’t if I bloody tried. Which I’m not because I don’t want to anyway.” He sidled up to the silent Au’Ra with his torch and tongue depressor. “Say “aaaaaah””

Dainty opened her mouth diligently. “Hmmm, yes. Still as pristine as it was 3 days ago, if a little irritated in the exact way one would expect of someone having recently performed fellatio. You could have just bragged about it Cid, no need for the pretense.”

“Carmine!” Cid scolded.

“It is really a wonder you can’t talk which such a lovely throat, my love. Would you be willing to let me take a sketch of it?”

“D'pends if yah plan to masturbate to it or not, Carmyne.” Dainty replied, fully drawling her words with the Lominsan accent.

“Oh! Oh! Oh!” Carmine clutched his hands to his heart, over-dramatic, then pressed one wrist to his forehead. “She speaks! My slender necked love speaks! And she has an accent! Cid, you are my brother and I love you but sir, prepare for death so that I may marry your widow instantly.”


	12. It All Ends

She couldn't say what woke her at first

The room was dark and silent as it ever was.

Then she realized Cid's warm weight wasn't at her back and instinctively rolled over to reach for him, finding the sheets warm from his heat but empty.

“Cid?” she called softly, sitting up and encountering him sitting on the end of the bed, staring sightlessly into the dark.

His harrowed expression finally piercing through her sleep fogged brain. 

It had been a trying 8 months, between Ultima being unleashed on Eorzea and being defeated, Solus' death and the war of succession breaking out tensions in the facility had been running high.

Varis yae Galvus had taken the throne and they all feared their funding being withdrawn at any second. As a High Legatus Varis was far simpler minded that his predecessor and lacked Solus' tactical genius. He had always disapproved of the idea of clone armies.

But Dainty and Cid, having finally learned to lean on each other instead of trying to be strong in silence had endured. Cid would have even gone so far as to call them happy together.

Sex had long since stopped being a weekly “duty” and become something they enjoyed simply because they wanted to.

“What is it, love?” Dainty asked, rising.

“Its over.” Cid replied, voice very dark and gave and Dainty felt her gut clench.

“What do you mean?”

“I've had an update from the current automaton.” Cid began slowly. 

Dainty was familiar with the current “Cid” running around Eorzea. Cid had sent it to the Sons of St Coinach, and the Allagans tower they were investigating in hopes of turning up something that would aid their research.

The problem was, as Cid began to explain to the sleepy Au'Ra, that the tiny handful of people that did know he and the others were down there were unaware that the Cid running around Eorzea wasn't the orginal clone his Father had made.

Varis zos Galvus had sent Nero tol Scaeva after the same information Cid was currently hunting and, in Nero's usual fashion, he had promptly messed absolutely everything up.

Nero's failure to procure the information on cloning could lead to only one outcome. Varis decreeing the entire idea of clone armies, which he had always disapproved of, to be useless and irrelevant and shutting the entire thing down.

They had always been aware that if Varis won the war of succession the project dismantled being dismantled was a strong posibility.

“What happens now?” Dainty asked softly.

“You get on a transport and go home.” Cid replied with utter finality, earning a soft breath of protest from Dainty.

“Have you finally snapped? This is my home!”

“Dainty...” he didn't look at her. 

He couldn't. 

If he did he wouldn't have the strength to say what came next. “... I need you not to argue. We will all be fine. Those that can be reintegrated into Garlean society will, the others will be cycled on to other projects but you are a liability now. You've seen too much and know too much. The Bride Draft is already defunct in Eorzea, it’s only a matter of time before its hand-waved away in Garlemald too. I can't protect you. I need you to get on a transport and go home.”

Dainty's mouth worked silently, there was 101 things she wanted to say but none of them changed the truth of Cid's statements.

“We always knew this was temporary, love.” Cid offered her with a shrug of his bare shoulders, as if nonchalant but Dainty knew better. She could read his distress in every muscle of his body. She knew how desperately he was trying to remain strong for her. 

“How long before I must go, can we not at least be together once more to say goodbye?”

“You must go now, while my name still holds weight with the current Emperor. The longer you linger the more chance of my order of a transport being ignored.”

“Now?!”

“Yes. I'm sor-ry Dainty.” Cid's voice half broke and Dainty longed to move to his side and comfort him but knew he would push her aside if she did. “Please, love. If you have ever cared for me, you will go. Now. So that I will always know you are safe.”

The only thing she could do to convey her love and care for him was to do as he said. He couldn't keep himself safe if he was worried about her and he was right, they would all be fine.

She rose, feeling as if a thousand steel hands clung to every limb, trying to drag her back into the bed.

“Will I see you again?” Dainty asked, tears choking her throat.

“I don't know.” Cid admitted, still not able to look at her. “Have you dressed?”

“Yes.”

He reached behind himself to offer her her identification card without looking at her.

“I've forged its security protocols to be the same as mine. It will get you upworld and onto a transport to Castrum Orriens without issue. At least for now. Say nothing. Just take it..... and go.”

Dainty took it without touching him.

And went.

As abruptly as her life in Garlemald had started, so too did her life in Garlemald end and, as it ever had been, by someone else’s command and someone else’s hand.

Cid listened to her go, her footsteps fading away without moving, until he was certain she had reached the elevator to depart.

He rose slowly, dressing in a numb, mechanical precision. He sent out an update to the team to alert them of this new development. It was only fair, their lives were about to fundamentally change, the should know it soon, rather than later. 

_Fucking Nero_ – Cid couldn't help but think to himself, exiting his room. That narcissistic, power hungry jackass had just cost him everything.

All his research, his hopes of crippling Garlemald from within... even Dainty.

The others were starting to gather in the common areas, chattering to themselves and trying to process this information he had sent them.

Jessie approached him first, taking one look at his drawn features and demanding;

“Where is Dainty?”

“I sent her away.”

Jessie realized she had heard the chime of the elevator earlier but thought nothing of it, it was so common and Dainty was supposedly unable to leave.

"I'm proud of you for that." Jessie told Cid softly. 

That couldn't have been easy for him but it had to be done, they all knew it. Jessie would have done it for him, had he been incapable of giving the Au'Ra up.

“What will we do now?” 

Cid heard someone ask from behind him but he wasn’t sure who.

“Jenn and I have decided to step up those retirement plans and make for Gridania.” Carmine announced in a jaunty tone, the dour mood unaffecting his delight at soon being surrounded by large busted Elezen woman. A travel hat had been set on his head at a jaunty angle to hide his Garlean 3rd Eye.

“Not a bad idea.” Jessie mused, looking around. “Quit this place before Varis decides to investigate exactly what we were doing down here and torch it behind us when we go.” 

“We were the Emperor’s ghosts, after all. It is what ghosts do, they disappear.” Jenn observed.

“I will see if I can round up some of most vulnerable junior staff for a work trip to Thavnair before the project is officially cancelled. No one will question too hard if we say are taking a quick jaunt to shake off some mental cobwebs. For the Glory of the Empire and all that rot. If we happen to get onto a boat for Lima Lominsa instead of a transport home….oops?” Jessie shrugged with a grin.

Cid nodded slowly. 

Most of the people down there were from Noble houses, or at least could boast their protection of a noble Name, much like Jessie could count on the protection of Cid nan Garlond despite being a Midlander. 

There were a small handful, however that might be used as scapegoats once they left the facility in ruins and destroyed all their research. Getting them far away before any self destruct mechanisms, and Cid had built several into the Hulk, were activated was the best idea he had heard for a while.

“Everyone gets out. All of them. As soon as the last leaves I’ll head for Ishgard and turn this place into an empty blackened shell on my way out.” Cid sighed.

He had been invited to Ishgard to help the Arch Bishop with his showboat of an airship, it would be an opportune moment to swap out for the automatons and working on airships instead of Allagans clones did not sound unappealing at that moment.

It sounded like a good way to forget all about Dainty.

“Oh good, then you can see the lovely Miss Dainty again.” Carmine grinned.

Cid couldn’t deny his heart lurched at the idea at the idea of seeing her again, and of maybe seeing some of the places she had told him about. 

She had lived a storied life, raised from her early teenaged years by the Mauraders guild in Limsa Lominsa, defecting to the Monk’s guild in Ul’Dah only to be kicked out for kissing her fellow disciples. Travelling as a Treasure Hunter with an Ishgardian Noble turned Pirate Captain.

But the knowledge that he should never have known her in the first place quelled the excitement in a rush. He had been privileged to know Dainty but it was a privilege that had been afforded to him by an abusive system that he did not agree with. 

They paths should never have crossed, and hers was the one most catastrophically damaged for their meeting, no matter if they had grown to be happy together.

“No.” Cid shook his head slowly, voice grave.“I never did bring that girl anything but pain. Let her forget all about me and Garlemald and that this whole thing ever happened. She’s free now. She never should have been anything else.”

His fatalistic tone of voice prevented the others from attempting to talk him out this obviously poor choice of stance to take. Cid clearly wouldn’t hear them right then and, if they did everything right, there would be chance yet in the future to remind him to seek the Au’Ra out.

“What a waste.” Jenn mused, looking around the facility. “All those years, all that research.”

In a matter of hours it would be a smoking husk. They had always had a protocol in place were this to happen and its instructions were both simple and clear.

Grab what you could, leave the rest and flee.

“The knowledge remains, Jenn. The knowledge remains. What we have learned cannot be stolen from us.” Carmine grinned. “Now come along. I’ve a date with an Elezen beauty, she just don’t know it yet.”

 

 

Returning to Limsa Lominsa was painful.

The dull ache to be wrapped up in Cid’s arms was always there but more poignantly was the pain of realizing that nothing had changed.

No one had missed her.

Dainty kept looked at people’s faces, willing someone to recognize her as a Drafted Bride. To acknowledge all she had been through but the usual suspicion and annoyance of Limsa’s residents was all that greeted her.

The Eorzean Brides kept in the Castra around the lands had all been released months ago. The celebrations had already occurred.

One lone little Au’Ra with nothing to her name but a broken heart blended in too well with the broke and down trodden that littered Limsa Lominsa’s streets.

She managed to pick pocket enough for an inn room for the night, and fully stole a change of clothes from a store front.

Being without gil was never too hard a trial for someone who had been surviving by her wits since her early teenaged years.

Dainty was good with a fishing pole too, and the head of the Fishermans Guild was known to have a taste for rare and exotic seafood. Dainty’s sea legs were also better than most, allowing her to continue fishing in even the moist roiling seas.

Days turned into months following the same pattern.

Wakeing alone at the inn, missing the heavy weight of one of Cid’s limbs over her. Rising to ask the Innkeeper to hold her room until 6.

They never minded.  
She might not have the gil in her pocket at the moment, but she would by nightfall.

Seagulls crying caught Dainty’s attention as she stepped out in to the crisp morning air.

She looked from the upper decks down to the lower ones, noting a larger than usual amount of boats in port. It was the last of the month and the deep sea fishers, those that spent entire weeks and months at a time at sea, where returning to offload their wares.

More wares meant more people in town. More people meant more coin purses.

On silent feet Dainty turned towards Hawker’s Alley, looking to get ahead of any others planning on plying their ill-begotten trade on those travelling through the city that day.

The more purses she could lift before the Maelstrom started receiving complaints of a pick-pocket and upped security the more lucrative her day would be. 

The crowds were ripe for the taking in Hawker’s alley. Sailors, their pockets full and bellies empty were roving among the stalls. Looking for meat of several varieties.

An amorous Roegadyn being slapped for his hand straying to the haunches of a pretty Elezen allowed Dainty to silently claim the mans’ coin purse before disappearing into the crowds.

Dainty, doing quite well with her take that morning, was just debating her chances on arguing a discount on the inn-room if she booked for an entire week when a shrill gasp pierced through her contemplation.

Someone had clearly just discovered their missing purse. Her time in Hawker’s Alley was elapsing.

“Dainty!”

The unexpected sound of her name turned her head.

“Dainty!” someone shrieked again and she found herself forcibly hugged from behind by a slender pair of arms. The owner fully bouncing up and down in delight and chanting “Dainty, Dainty, Dainty, Dainty, Dainty!!!”

She turned upon release, finding herself looking at a pretty brunette Midlander with a flattering smattering of freckles across her sun tanned skin.

Marisolle. And Bshoi too. The mammoth Xaela appearing out of the crowd like a storm cloud. They had been working the same game that Dainty had.

Sailors who stopped to linger in Marisolle’s pretty, brunette beauty quickly had their pockets lightened by Bshoi.

Another Kraken Arms crew member, Tuco, lingering nearby in case anyone got too grabby with Marisolle.

“Dainty! You’re alive!” Marisolle bubbled, hugging her tightly again. “Oh Gods, when the Draft was cancelled and you didn’t reappear we feared the worst!”

“Welcome home.” Bshoi rumbled. “The Captain’ll be glad t’see you.”

“Aye! You’d not believe the Hell T’mra has been giving him all this time over your being taken. He took to drinking so heavily over it we had to ask her to lay off afore he ran the ship aground.” Marisolle bubbled.

A smile split Dainty’s lips despite her aching heart.

The Kraken Arms wasn’t home. The truth was she had never really had one save her childhood home that she could not remember.

But it was something more than nothing.


End file.
